Path
Contract.term.offer.topic
Id
Contract.term.offer.topic
Type
Cardinality
0 - 1
Definition
The owner of an asset has the residual control rights over the asset: the right to decide all usages of the asset in any way not inconsistent with a prior contract, custom, or law (Hart, 1995, p. 30).
Comment
The Contract.topic may be an application for or offer of a policy or service (e.g., uri to a consent directive form or a health insurance policy), which becomes the Contract once accepted by both the grantor and grantee.
The Contract Resource may function simply as the computable representation of the executed contract, which may be the attached to the Contract Resource as the “binding” or as the “friendly” electronic form. For example, a Contract Resource may be automatically populated with the values expressed in a related QuestionnaireResponse.
However, the Contract Resource may be considered the legally binding contract if it is the only “executed” form of this contract, and includes the signatures as *The Contract Resource may function as the computable representation of an application or offer in a pre-executed Contract if the grantor has not entered any values. In this case, it is populated with values in a “legal” form of the application or offer or by the values in an associated Questionnaire. If the grantor has filled in the legal form or the associated Questionnaire Response, then these values are used to populate a pre-executed Contract Resource.
If the Contract.topic is considered an application or offer, then the policy is often required to be attached as the “legal” basis for the application to ensure “informed consent” to the contract, and that any discrepancy between the application and the policy are interpreted against the policy. Implementers should check organizational and jurisdictional policies to determine the relationship among multiple representations of a contract pre- and post-execution.
Requirements
In the context of a contract, the topic is the matter under consideration in regards to which specific rights, privileges, obligations, restrictions, and prohibitions are binding on any grantor and grantee parties upon the execution of the contract.
Given the wide range of contract topics, implementers need to be cognizant of the business use case for which they are designing a FHIR Contract, and narrowly specify the topic being represented with respect to the Contract.type and any specializing Contract.subtype.
The same topic, e.g., an asset such as a good or service, such as a real property, medical supply, insurance, information, a procedure or employment, or a manner of conduct, such adherence to a privacy, trust, or security policy, may be the topic of multiple types of contracts.
One way to determine the Contract.topic is to answer the question: “What is the object of negotiation?”
Answer: The Contract.topic, which may be described with more detail in the [0..*]Contract.valuedItem @ [0..1] Contract.valuedItem.entity[x] Definition: Specific type of Contract Valued Item that may be priced. CodeableConcept|Reference(Any)
Contract.topic is “the what” that a grantor is exchanging with a grantee in return for some benefit.
Contract.topic is “the what” to which any Contract.action is being applied for any stipulated Contract.action.reason.
AContract.topic is “the what” governed by the execution of the contract to which any party’s rights, privileges, obligations, restrictions, and prohibitions apply.
Constraint
All FHIR elements must have a @value or children