Questionnaire

A questionnaire is a reusable form definition in Care — a set of questions you design once and then collect answers to, again and again, about a patient or an encounter. It is how Care lets a deployment build its own intake sheets, assessments, and checklists instead of waiting for them to be coded into the software.

What it represents

In Care's FHIR-aligned model, a questionnaire maps to the Questionnaire resource. It defines:

• The questions — an ordered, nestable tree, each question with a type (text, number, date, choice, group, and so on)
• The subject — whether the form is answered about a patient or about an encounter
• The behaviour — conditional logic, required fields, units, and allowed choices that shape how the form fills in
• The clinical meaning — questions can carry a clinical code (e.g. LOINC) so their answers land in the record as real Observations, not just stored text

The key distinction: a questionnaire is the blank form, never a filled-in one. Each set of answers a clinician submits is stored separately as a Questionnaire Response, so a single definition can accumulate thousands of responses across many patients over time.

Question types

Each question declares a type, which controls how it is rendered and how its answer is validated on submit. The common ones:

Type	Captures
group	A container that holds related sub-questions (must have at least one child)
string / text	Short or long free text
integer / decimal	Numbers
boolean	Yes / no
date / dateTime / time	Points in time
choice	A pick from a fixed list or a ValueSet
quantity	A number plus a unit (e.g. blood pressure, dose)
display	Static text shown to the user, with no answer

Two features turn a flat list of fields into a form that feels intelligent. Conditional display lets a question appear only when an earlier answer meets a condition, so the clinician sees follow-ups instead of every field at once. Coded questions attach a clinical code, so the answer is filed as an Observation in the patient record; a question without a code simply stores its answer as form data.

Lifecycle

A questionnaire moves through three publication states, modelled on FHIR. The important rule: once a form goes live it is treated as immutable — you retire it and publish a replacement rather than editing it in place, so every response ever submitted keeps pointing at a stable, unchanged definition.

draft → active → retired

• draft — being authored; not yet available for submission
• active — published and accepting submissions; should not be edited or deleted
• retired — withdrawn from use, but kept so the responses that reference it stay meaningful

Only active questionnaires accept submissions; a draft or retired form rejects them.

How it connects

A questionnaire sits at the centre of Care's data-collection flow and ties together several other primitives:

• Patient / Encounter — every response is recorded against a Patient, and against an Encounter too when the form's subject type is encounter
• Questionnaire Response — each submission produces a stored Questionnaire Response, the answers separated from the form
• Observation — coded questions materialise their answers as Observations on submit, so vitals and findings flow into the clinical record
• ValueSet — choice and quantity questions draw their allowed answers from a ValueSet
• Organization — a questionnaire is scoped to one or more organizations, which decides who can see and use it
• Response Template — a Questionnaire Response Template can pre-fill answers to speed up repetitive forms

Permissions

Access to questionnaires is governed by these permissions, granted to users through their roles.

Permission	Description	System Roles
can_write_questionnaire	Create a questionnaire and set the organizations it is scoped to	Admin, Facility Admin
can_read_questionnaire	View questionnaire definitions, list them, and see the organizations a questionnaire is scoped to	Admin, Doctor, Nurse, Administrator, Staff, Facility Admin, Volunteer, Pharmacist, Admin (role org), Manager (role org), Member (role org)
can_submit_patient_questionnaire	Submit a questionnaire about a patient (no encounter)	Volunteer, Staff, Doctor, Nurse, Admin, Facility Admin, Administrator
can_submit_encounter_questionnaire	Submit a questionnaire against a patient encounter	Staff, Doctor, Nurse, Admin, Facility Admin

Roles are granted to users through organization, facility, or patient memberships, and the access they confer cascades down the organization tree. Editing and deleting a questionnaire are restricted to superusers, while most clinical roles can read and submit.

Related

• Reference: Questionnaire (technical)
• Concept: Questionnaire Response
• Concept: Questionnaire Response Template
• Concept: ValueSet
• Concept: Observation
• Standard: FHIR Questionnaire and QuestionnaireResponse, which Care's draft / active / retired model and nested question tree follow