Patient

The FHIR R4 Patient resource represents demographic and administrative information about an individual receiving healthcare services. It is the central reference point for nearly all clinical resources in FHIR.

Use Cases

Register a new patient in the Health Gorilla network
Retrieve or match patient demographics across systems
Link clinical data (e.g., labs, medications, encounters) to the patient record

Base URLs

Production: https://api.healthgorilla.com/fhir/R4/Patient
Sandbox: https://sandbox.healthgorilla.com/fhir/R4/Patient

Required Scopes

patient.read for GET
patient.write for POST and PUT

For details, go to: OAuth 2.0 Authentication.

Search Parameters

Parameter	Description	FHIR Value Set or Example	FHIR Data Type	Required
`name`	Filters by patient name (first, last, or both)	`"John"`, `"Doe"`, `"John Doe"`	`string`	No
`identifier`	Searches by a patient identifier	MRN, SSN, or system-specific IDs	`token`	No
`birthdate`	Filters by date of birth	`eq1980-01-01`, `le2000-12-31`	`date`	No
`gender`	Filters by gender	`AdministrativeGender` (`male`, `female`, `other`)	`token`	No
`address`	Filters by any part of the address	`"Sunnyvale"`	`string`	No
`telecom`	Searches by phone number or email	`555-1234`, `[email protected]`	`token`	No
`_id`	Searches by the FHIR resource ID	`Patient/{id}`	`token`	No

Resource Attributes

Attribute	Description	Example	FHIR Data Type	Required
`id`	Unique FHIR ID for the patient	`pat-78910`	`id`	Yes
`identifier`	External patient IDs	MRN: `123456`, SSN: `999-12-3456`	`Identifier[]`	No
`name`	Full patient name	`John Doe`	`HumanName[]`	Yes
`gender`	Patient's gender	`male`	`code`	No
`birthDate`	Date of birth	`1985-06-21`	`date`	No
`telecom`	Contact information	`555-555-5555`, `[email protected]`	`ContactPoint[]`	No
`address`	Physical or mailing address	`123 Main St, Sunnyvale, CA`	`Address[]`	No
`deceasedBoolean`	Indicates if the patient is deceased	`false`, `true`	`boolean`	No
`active`	Whether the patient record is active	`true`	`boolean`	No
`managingOrganization`	Organization responsible for the patient	`Organization/{id}`	`Reference(Organization)`	No
`communication.language`	Preferred language	`en`, `es`	`CodeableConcept`	No
`generalPractitioner`	Reference to the primary care provider	`Practitioner/{id}`	`Reference`	No

Events

Patient records emit webhook events on create and update. For setup and payload format, see Webhooks & Polling.

Errors

All Patient operations return FHIR OperationOutcome for structured error responses. See Error Handling.

More Information

Patient guide on the developer portal — workflows, network choice, Patient360 patterns
HL7 FHIR Patient specification