med_order reports the fulfillment that actually reached the pharmacy rather than the most recent attempt, and referral_order.send_to_name carries the recipient’s name for referrals sent to someone in the provider directory. Both were classified as behavior changes under Change Management and carried seven days of notice. No columns are added, removed, or renamed.
Schema Changes
Release Highlights
Fulfillment type and state on medication ordersfulfillment_type and fulfillment_state previously reflected the most recent fulfillment attempt on the order. An order sent electronically and later printed therefore read as paper with a completed fulfillment, with no record that Surescripts ever succeeded, and cancel and change requests overwrote the original send the same way.
The columns now report the successful electronic send when the order has one, then any completed delivery, then the last attempt. Cancel and change requests are ignored, because they act on an order that was already sent rather than delivering a new one. Grain is unchanged: one row per medication order, and no order loses a fulfillment it had before.
What to check on your side:
- Counts of orders by
fulfillment_typeshift towardssurescriptsand away frompaper, mostly on orders that were sent electronically and later printed. - Where you join on pharmacy identifiers, expect more rows to carry
pharmacy_ncpdpid, because the electronic send is the one reported.
send_to_name was previously populated only when a free-text recipient was entered on the referral. Referrals to someone in the provider directory showed that person’s name in the chart, but the column stayed blank in the Hosted Database.
The column now falls back to the name captured on the referral order when the free-text field is empty, so the name shown on the referral in the chart is the name you see in the query. No row that already had a send_to_name value changes. The column remains a display string, which may include credentials or an organization name; the structured recipient_* columns are still the place to key on NPI or directory contact type.
What to check on your side:
- Far more rows are populated. Reports that count or group by recipient will grow, mostly for directory-based referrals.
- Keep using
recipient_*when you need structured recipient identity; usesend_to_namewhen you need the label the practice saw on the letter.
early_release.med_order and early_release.referral_order tables stay available for one more week so you can compare them against GA, then they are retired. If you pointed test queries at the early_release schema, repoint them at the GA tables.
The changed columns are described in the Hosted Database schema.
If you have any questions about this topic please reach out to Elation Support Portal with the subject line HDB - <your_question>