← ReferenceStandards

What is a Patient?

The Patient resource holds demographic and administrative information about a person receiving care. It does not contain clinical data — that belongs in Observation, Condition, Encounter, and similar resources that reference the Patient.

Key elements

identifier — business identifiers: national ID, hospital number, passport (system + value pairs)
name — array of HumanName: family, given, prefix, suffix, use (official/nickname)
gender — administrative gender: male, female, other, unknown
birthDate — date of birth (YYYY-MM-DD)
address — home, work, or billing address
telecom — phone, email, fax
active — whether this patient record is in use
communication — preferred language(s)
generalPractitioner — reference to Practitioner or Organization

id vs identifier

id is the FHIR server's internal identifier — used in URLs (/Patient/1005). It changes if the resource is copied to another server.

identifier is a business identifier from the real world — a national ID, hospital number, or insurance number. It follows the patient across systems.