Skip to main content

Assessment Discharge and Withdrawal - FHIR API

The Assessment Discharge and Withdrawal (ADW) specification defines a number of messages to support the exchange of structured information between healthcare and social care organisations.

Page contents

This standard will not be updated as there will be no further development on this product. This standard has now officially been retired.

It should be noted that the product does not support the Discharge to Assess process.

Any development to this standard will be at the supplier’s risk as it does not support government policy.

The FHIR messaging service will continue to remain available to support existing providers who have implemented the messaging service.

The Assessment Discharge and Withdrawal (ADW) specification currently covers the following information flow:

Transfers of care from hospital to social services for patients with care and support needs

The requirements for this information flow are defined in the regulations under the Care Act 2014. The Act describes a series of notices that must be sent from hospitals to adult social services to support the discharge of hospital patients who have care and support needs.

The notices are defined as:

Assessment notice

This is used by the hospital to inform social services that an assessment of the patient’s care and support needs is required. Where known, it includes an expected discharge date.

Discharge notice

Following the issue of an assessment notice, a discharge notice is sent by the hospital to social services to confirm the patient’s proposed discharge date.

Withdrawal notice

This is used to withdraw a previously issued assessment notice and/or a discharge notice. A withdrawal notice may be required to be issued for a number of reasons, for example because the patient’s medical condition has changed or the patient is eligible for NHS Continuing Health Care.

Implementable specification versions

The table below contains the beta versions of the ADW specifications.

These specifications are deemed to be stable enough for first of type and pilot implementations.

All versions are based on the FHIR® DSTU2 standard.

Status Release Version Release Date Containing capabilities Details
Beta ADW 5.3.0-beta.1 n/a Information to support ADW Updated version of the specification for ADW to reflect that the ADW-AssessmentNotice example has been updated. This version supersedes the previous versions.
Beta ADW 5.2.0-beta.1 n/a Information to support ADW Updated version of the specification for ADW – Contains guidance on how to carry risk factor information, and an amended Assessment Notice Example that includes risk factor.
Beta ADW 5.1.0-beta.1 n/a ADW 5.1.0-beta.1 Updated version of the specification for ADW – Contains additional fields and a new encounter message.
Beta ADW 5.0.0-beta n/a Information to support ADW Current beta version of specification for ADW.
Warning - beta specifications are still subject to some changes, but these changes will be done under a RFC / CCN process involving first of type stakeholders.

ADW-MESH validator pack

The ADW-MESH validator has been developed to assist organisations who wish to send ADW messages over the MESH transport to ensure that the messages they are constructing are valid according to FHIR schemas and requirements.

To use the validator, download the pack, which consists of a zip file containing:

  • installer JAR file - the installation of JRE 1.8.0 or later is a pre-requisite for use of this validation too
  • user guide
  • example .ctl and .dat files

Additional message guidance

Download additional ADW guidance (this is a PDF document).

Further information

internal
internal ADW-MESH validator user guide

The ADW-MESH validator has been developed to assist organisations who wish to send ADW messages over the MESH transport to ensure that the messages they are constructing are valid according to ITK FHIR schemas and requirements.

Last edited: 29 September 2022 9:37 am