Terminology

Some of the terms below are common RESTful API concepts, illustrated here with Greenlight specific examples.

Continuity of Care Document (CCD)

Greenlight retrieves some medical records from EHRs in the form of CCDs. The CCD is an older, standard structure for exchanging medical record data between EHR systems, such as passing a list of a patient’s medications from one doctor’s EHR to another. The format is XML, following an HL7 standard (CCDA CCD).

EHRs produce several kinds of CCDs.

• One type is a summary of the entire medical record, with historical lists of diagnoses, procedures, all the meds the patient has been prescribed, lab results, etc. This summary CCD often covers the entire time the patient has been seen at the medical facility. Some summaries mention all the encounters within them (Continuity of Care Document, CCD), others do not (Health Summary).
• The other type is called an “Encounter-CCD” or "eCCD" and describes just one medical encounter (a doctor visit, a set of tests which were ordered, etc.). Encounter-CCDs might have more detailed vital sign data, and do not show as much overall patient history.

Different EHR vendors (Epic, Oracle/Cerner, Athena, eClinicalworks, etc.) provide different mixes of CDA documents. Some provide only one type or the other, some provide both. Greenlight attempts to retrieve both types of CCDs and makes both types available.

Increasingly, EHRs and customers are relying on FHIR R4 data, a newer standard. See below for more information.

Customer

A Customer is the entity requesting the Patient's Medical Record (you). This is usually the name recognized and trusted by the patient, the name the patient will recognize in a Greenlight invitation to share records (for example, ABC Company).

NOTE: Some Greenlight customers might not be the entity the patient will recognize - an organization the customer is serving might be a better choice for patients to see, instead. There is a way for you to set, for each records Order, the name patients will see in Greenlight communications and in the Greenlight Record Finder app. More on that below ("Name for Communication"), and in the API Reference.

customerId

Within Greenlight, customers are identified by their customerId. This is a unique identifying code issued by Greenlight. Each customer receives two customerIds - one for the test Environment and another for the production Environment. See the Environments section of this document for more information.

Document

A patient medical record, or portion of the record. Greenlight retrieves several types of documents. The most popular is a Greenlight PDF visualization of the FHIR R4 data. We also provide CDA documents, usually Continuity of Care Documents (CCDs - see entry above). CDA documents are available as raw XML or as PDF. Greenlight also sometimes retrieves other, non-standard PDF formatted documents, which are available for fetching. The most common example is a lab report.

If you are looking for machine readable data, rather than documents, see the entry for "FHIR."

Environment

Greenlight has two, securely separated instances of our platform and API services. One is for testing (Test - also called sandbox) and the other is for real transactions, once testing is completed (Production). For more information, see the Environments section of this document.

External Order Id

This is a string the Customer creates and uses to uniquely identify an Order. This must be unique across all Orders for that Customer. Customers use claim Ids, MRNs, case numbers, account numbers, etc. for these values. You can tie more than one of these Ids to a single Order. See the Create an Order technical reference section for more information.

FHIR

Acronym for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources. FHIR is a federally mandated standard for exchanging health data, based on a json format. FHIR data is designed to be easily machine readable.

Name for Communication

The default setting at Greenlight is to show the Customer name in all Greenlight patient facing communication and application screens. The patient sees this as "who is requesting records." We allow customers to over-ride this name, Order by Order, if needed.

For example, if your name is known to your customer, but the patient would be more likely to recognize (and trust) the name of a healthcare facility where they are enrolled in a trial or study, you can set the Order with the study site's name, and Greenlight will display that name, instead of your Customer name, when communicating with patients.

NOTE: This is a customer configuration, which Customer Success must enable, before it can be used.

See the API Reference sections for Create an Order, for more details.

Order

An Order is a logical grouping of a single medical record Request or multiple record Requests (from different healthcare facilities).

Following the creation of an Order, you can create one or more Requests associated with that Order. For more information about Orders and Requests, see the API Reference sections for Create an Order, and for Add Requests.

Orders have an externalOrderId, which helps your organization discuss Orders and Requests with Greenlight Support. See External Order Id definition in this listing.

Orders also allow you to over-ride the Customer name that shows to patients. See "Name for Communication."

Patient

A patient is the subject of the medical record being requested (for example, Jane Smith). It is also an object you create on the Greenlight API using the Create Patient API request. Orders you place with Greenlight must always belong to a Patient, so the workflow is usually to create a Patient, then add an Order and Request(s). The Patients you create within Greenlight will belong to your Customer (you).

See the Create Patient section of the API Reference for more information, including required data elements to create a Patient within Greenlight.

Request (Record Request)

A Request is for one patient's medical records from one specific medical facility (a practice, a hospital, a health system, a lab, etc.). Greenlight requires the facility name (practice name, or hospital name, etc.) and ZIP Code, but providing more information, such as street address, city and a phone number, enhances Greenlight's locating of the records, increasing success rates. For more information about Requests, see the Add Requests section of the API Reference.

NOTE: Don't confuse this Request (for a patient's medical records) with an API request (a call to a Greenlight API endpoint).