The Colorado Behavioral Health Administration (BHA) is developing a draft FHIR implementation guide (IG) designed to standardize and streamline behavioral health data reporting between provider organizations and the BHA. This initiative is aimed at reducing administrative burden associated with program reporting, enabling providers to more easily extend and leverage in-house systems of record for data collection and submission.
FHIR is a widely adopted health data interoperability standard already supported by federally certified electronic health record (EHR) systems, making it a practical foundation for reducing implementation costs and accelerating deployment.The draft IG defines how systems would exchange data elements from the Colorado Behavioral Health Reporting Model (CoBHRM) using FHIR resources and profiles. Key features include:
Standards-Based Foundation: The IG leverages US Core 6.1 profiles wherever possible, including Patient, Encounter, Observation, Condition, Organization, and Provenance resources. This approach minimizes custom development by building on capabilities already required for federal certification programs.
Structured Assessment Data: Approximately 70 CoBHRM data elements are captured through FHIR QuestionnaireResponse resources, representing structured intake, admission, discharge, and program-specific assessments. This approach enables EHR systems to map existing assessment forms to standardized FHIR representations.
Custom BHA Profiles: Where US Core profiles do not fully address BHA requirements, the IG defines focused extensions and constraints, such as the BHA Client Profile (extending US Core Patient with Colorado-specific elements like granularity of ethnicity data).
The CoBHRM data elements (i.e., what data BHA requires for program administration, oversight, and federal block grant reporting) are established through separate processes and are not within the scope of this technical IG. The IG focuses on how that data is organized and transmitted using FHIR standards.
