Change to the meaning of an OID for Quebec patient identifier

We had a similar issue in Alberta a couple years ago, and we basically did what Lloyd suggests - deprecate the existing one, and create 2 new ones.

Hello Dean,
We would like to confirm that "Quebec, Canada Personal Health Number OID: 2.16.840.1.113883.4.56" is being used in NL EHR.

As of today, there are "9336" distinct patients with Quebec Personal Health Numbers are in NL Client Registry.

The proposed action will cause some issues for patient query using HL7 v3 CR messages.

Thanks,
Sisira (NL Centre for Health Information).

I'm equally nervous about the proposed action. It's *very* hard to be confident that no-one's using the OID for its defined purpose. The safest thing to do is to update the OID to indicate that it's erroneously been used for multiple things, deprecate it and then define two new OIDs and ask systems to migrate. That's more work and introduces a potential break in interoperability, but it's safer.

If I understand correctly, you have an OID created for one purpose, but that ended up being used for a different purpose. The request is to change the description to reflect that different purpose, and to create a new OID for the original purpose.

This feels wrong, but I don't immediately see a better resolution. Maybe @lmckenzie has some thoughts.

Are you sure no-one is using original OID for the original purpose?

Elliot.

We would like to make a change to the description of the OID that is currently defined as the Quebec (Numéro d'Assurance Maladie (Health Insurance Number /PHN) ( 2.16.840.1.113883.4.56 ) to change its meaning to be the Quebec Numéro d’identification unique d’usager (Unique User Identification Number / NIU). A new OID of 2.16.124.10.101.1.60.100 will be registered for the Quebec NAM.

These changes are to align the HL7 OID registry with how the 2 OIDs are currently being used in the province by point of service vendors, such as EMRs and pharmacy management systems, who integrate with Ministry systems as documented in the The Manuel_FAL_Registries_V_1.5.2 written by the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec.

The requested changes, as well as the info for the new OID are in the attached document:
OID Update for QC NAM_NIU

This post will be open for a couple of weeks to allow the community to provide feedback prior to the change being made.