Concepts/Questionnaire: Difference between revisions

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conceptdefinitionsCARE 3.0+

A questionnaire is a reusable form definition in Care — a set of questions you design once and then collect answers to, again and again, about a patient or an encounter. It is how Care lets a deployment build its own intake sheets, assessments, and checklists instead of waiting for them to be coded into the software.

What it represents

In Care's FHIR-aligned model, a questionnaire maps to the Questionnaire resource. It defines:

The questions — an ordered, nestable tree, each question with a type (text, number, date, choice, group, and so on)
The subject — whether the form is answered about a patient or about an encounter
The behaviour — conditional logic, required fields, units, and allowed choices that shape how the form fills in
The clinical meaning — questions can carry a clinical code (e.g. LOINC) so their answers land in the record as real Observations, not just stored text

The key distinction: a questionnaire is the blank form, never a filled-in one. Each set of answers a clinician submits is stored separately as a Concepts/Questionnaire Response, so a single definition can accumulate thousands of responses across many patients over time.

Question types

Each question declares a type, which controls how it is rendered and how its answer is validated on submit. The common ones:

Type	Captures
`group`	A container that holds related sub-questions (must have at least one child)
`string` / `text`	Short or long free text
`integer` / `decimal`	Numbers
`boolean`	Yes / no
`date` / `dateTime` / `time`	Points in time
`choice`	A pick from a fixed list or a [[Concepts/Value Set
`quantity`	A number plus a unit (e.g. blood pressure, dose)
`display`	Static text shown to the user, with no answer

Two features turn a flat list of fields into a form that feels intelligent. Conditional display lets a question appear only when an earlier answer meets a condition, so the clinician sees follow-ups instead of every field at once. Coded questions attach a clinical code, so the answer is filed as an Observation in the patient record; a question without a code simply stores its answer as form data.

Lifecycle

A questionnaire moves through three publication states, modelled on FHIR. The important rule: once a form goes live it is treated as immutable — you retire it and publish a replacement rather than editing it in place, so every response ever submitted keeps pointing at a stable, unchanged definition.

draft → active → retired

draft — being authored; not yet available for submission
active — published and accepting submissions; should not be edited or deleted
retired — withdrawn from use, but kept so the responses that reference it stay meaningful

Only active questionnaires accept submissions; a draft or retired form rejects them.

How it connects

A questionnaire sits at the centre of Care's data-collection flow and ties together several other primitives:

Patient / Encounter — every response is recorded against a Concepts/Patient, and against an Concepts/Encounter too when the form's subject type is encounter
Questionnaire Response — each submission produces a stored Concepts/Questionnaire Response, the answers separated from the form
Observation — coded questions materialise their answers as Observations on submit, so vitals and findings flow into the clinical record
ValueSet — choice and quantity questions draw their allowed answers from a ValueSet
Organization — a questionnaire is scoped to one or more organizations, which decides who can see and use it
Response Template — a Questionnaire Response Template can pre-fill answers to speed up repetitive forms

Permissions

Access to questionnaires is governed by these permissions, granted to users through their roles.

Permission	Description	System Roles
`can_write_questionnaire`	Create a questionnaire and set the organizations it is scoped to	Admin, Facility Admin
`can_read_questionnaire`	View questionnaire definitions, list them, and see the organizations a questionnaire is scoped to	Admin, Doctor, Nurse, Administrator, Staff, Facility Admin, Volunteer, Pharmacist, Admin (role org), Manager (role org), Member (role org)
`can_submit_patient_questionnaire`	Submit a questionnaire about a patient (no encounter)	Volunteer, Staff, Doctor, Nurse, Admin, Facility Admin, Administrator
`can_submit_encounter_questionnaire`	Submit a questionnaire against a patient encounter	Staff, Doctor, Nurse, Admin, Facility Admin

Roles are granted to users through organization, facility, or patient memberships, and the access they confer cascades down the organization tree. Editing and deleting a questionnaire are restricted to superusers, while most clinical roles can read and submit.

Concept: Concepts/Observation
Reference: References/Questionnaire

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 Roles are granted to users through organization, facility, or patient memberships, and the access they confer cascades down the organization tree. Editing and deleting a questionnaire are restricted to superusers, while most clinical roles can read and submit.
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