Concepts/Questionnaire
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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.
Related
- Concept: Concepts/Observation
- Reference: References/Questionnaire