Patient $summary | Medplum

The $summary operation generates an International Patient Summary (IPS) document for a patient. This creates a comprehensive clinical summary following the IPS Implementation Guide.

Use Cases

Care Transitions and Referrals: Generate standardized clinical summaries when patients move between care settings or providers
Patient Portal Health Summaries: Provide patients with comprehensive, readable summaries of their health record
Emergency Department Quick Views: Give ED clinicians rapid access to essential patient information during emergencies
Cross-Border Health Record Sharing: Share patient data internationally using the standardized IPS format

Invocation

GET [base]/Patient/[id]/$summary

POST [base]/Patient/[id]/$summary

Input Parameters

Parameter	Cardinality	Type	Description
`author`	0..1	`Reference`	Reference to Practitioner, PractitionerRole, or Organization to list as the composition author. Defaults to the current user.
`authoredOn`	0..1	`instant`	The date/time the summary was authored. Defaults to current time.
`start`	0..1	`date`	Start date for filtering resources
`end`	0..1	`date`	End date for filtering resources
`_since`	0..1	`instant`	Only include resources modified since this date
`identifier`	0..1	`string`	Identifier for the composition
`profile`	0..1	`canonical`	Profile to validate against

Output

Returns a Bundle of type document containing:

Composition - The IPS Composition resource organizing all sections
Patient - The patient resource
Author - The author (Practitioner/PractitionerRole/Organization)
Clinical Resources - All relevant clinical data organized into sections

IPS Sections

The summary includes the following sections (when data is available):

Section	LOINC Code	Resources
Allergies	48765-2	AllergyIntolerance
Immunizations	11369-6	Immunization
Medications	10160-0	MedicationRequest
Problem List	11450-4	Condition
Results	30954-2	DiagnosticReport, Observation
Social History	29762-2	Observation (social-history category)
Vital Signs	8716-3	Observation (vital-signs category)
Procedures	47519-4	Procedure
Encounters	46240-8	Encounter
Devices	46264-8	DeviceUseStatement
Assessments	51848-0	ClinicalImpression
Plan of Treatment	18776-5	CarePlan, Goal, ServiceRequest
Goals	61146-7	Goal
Health Concerns	75310-3	Condition (health-concern category)
Functional Status	47420-5	Observation (survey category)
Notes	34109-9	ClinicalImpression (note type)
Reason for Referral	42349-1	ServiceRequest (referral type)
Insurance	48768-6	Account

Example

Request

GET /fhir/R4/Patient/patient123/$summary

Response

{
  "resourceType": "Bundle",
  "type": "document",
  "timestamp": "2026-01-08T15:30:00.000Z",
  "entry": [
    {
      "resource": {
        "resourceType": "Composition",
        "id": "composition123",
        "status": "final",
        "type": {
          "coding": [
            {
              "system": "http://loinc.org",
              "code": "60591-5",
              "display": "Patient Summary"
            }
          ]
        },
        "subject": {
          "reference": "Patient/patient123"
        },
        "date": "2026-01-08T15:30:00.000Z",
        "author": [
          {
            "reference": "Practitioner/practitioner456"
          }
        ],
        "title": "Medical Summary",
        "section": [
          {
            "title": "Allergies",
            "code": {
              "coding": [
                {
                  "system": "http://loinc.org",
                  "code": "48765-2"
                }
              ]
            },
            "text": {
              "status": "generated",
              "div": "<div xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml\">...</div>"
            },
            "entry": [
              {
                "reference": "AllergyIntolerance/allergy789"
              }
            ]
          }
        ]
      }
    },
    {
      "resource": {
        "resourceType": "Patient",
        "id": "patient123"
      }
    },
    {
      "resource": {
        "resourceType": "AllergyIntolerance",
        "id": "allergy789"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Resource Types Included

The operation collects and organizes the following resource types:

Account
AllergyIntolerance
CarePlan
ClinicalImpression
Condition
Coverage
DeviceUseStatement
DiagnosticReport
Encounter
Goal
Immunization
MedicationRequest
Observation
Procedure
RelatedPerson
ServiceRequest

Behavior

Data Collection: Uses the $everything operation internally to gather all patient-related resources
Section Assignment: Automatically assigns resources to appropriate IPS sections based on resource type and category codes
Nested Resources: Handles nested resources (e.g., Observations that are members of other Observations) appropriately
HTML Generation: Generates human-readable HTML tables for each section
Event Period: Calculates the composition event period from resource timestamps

Error Responses

Status Code	Description
`404 Not Found`	Patient not found
`403 Forbidden`	Insufficient permissions