{
  "resourceType": "NamingSystem",
  "id": "CaOnLicensePhysicianNS",
  "name": "CaOnLicensePhysician",
  "status": "draft",
  "kind": "identifier",
  "type": {
    "coding": [
      {
        "code": "MD",
        "system": "http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/v2-0203",
        "display": "Medical License number"
      }
    ]
  },
  "date": "2026-09-15",
  "publisher": "WELLSTAR Technologies Corp.",
  "responsible": "College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario -- the assigning authority. The namespace is registered by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, with eHealth Ontario as the responsible party, in Canada Health Infoway's Canadian URI Registry; this specification declares rather than mints it.",
  "jurisdiction": [
    {
      "coding": [
        {
          "code": "CA-ON",
          "system": "urn:iso:std:iso:3166:-2"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "description": "Identifies an Ontario physician's licence number: the registration number the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) assigns to a licensed physician. Values are the College's own and are assigned by the College -- this specification neither mints nor validates them, and a number that is well formed is not thereby a number in good standing. A practitioner without one is normal and conformant: a nurse practitioner, a registered nurse, a medical office assistant and an administrative user all hold none, which is why every slice carrying it is optional. WRITE https://fhir.infoway-inforoute.ca/NamingSystem/ca-on-license-physician AND READ ALL FOUR ADDRESSES BELOW. Canada Health Infoway's Canadian URI Registry publishes that URI as the preferred identifier for this namespace, alongside the OID 2.16.840.1.113883.4.347 and a registered alias at https://ehealthontario.ca/API/FHIR/NamingSystem/ca-on-license-physician. Two further addresses carry the same numbers in real data and are published by no registry: http://ehealthontario.ca/API/FHIR/NamingSystem/ca-on-license-physician, which is the historical write shape of this platform and survives in OntarioMD's HRM specification, and http://infoway-inforoute.ca/fhir/NamingSystem/ca-on-license-physician, which Ontario's own e-referral package uses. THE CHOICE OF WRITE URI IS ONTARIO HEALTH'S, NOT THIS SPECIFICATION'S: its identifier policy separates global identifier namespaces from its own local ones, assigns the global base to Infoway, and classifies the CPSO licence under that base -- and its ONE ID specification maps CPSO to the same URI in its list of valid licensing authorities. No URI here is derived from another and no suffix, scheme or substring rule relates them, so a reader resolving only one silently misses every practitioner whose number was written under the rest. Treat a value found under any of them as one licence number held under one authority, not as several identifiers.",
  "uniqueId": [
    {
      "type": "uri",
      "value": "https://fhir.infoway-inforoute.ca/NamingSystem/ca-on-license-physician",
      "preferred": true,
      "comment": "The registry's preferred URI for this namespace, and the address this specification's Practitioner profile fixes its licence slices to. Author against this one."
    },
    {
      "type": "oid",
      "value": "2.16.840.1.113883.4.347",
      "preferred": true,
      "comment": "The registry's preferred OID for this namespace. `preferred` is scoped to the identifier type, so an OID and a URI may each be preferred without contradiction."
    },
    {
      "type": "uri",
      "value": "urn:oid:2.16.840.1.113883.4.347",
      "preferred": false,
      "comment": "The same OID in URN form, which the registry also publishes as a URI. Read it; an Identifier.system carrying a urn:oid form names this namespace and not another."
    },
    {
      "type": "uri",
      "value": "https://ehealthontario.ca/API/FHIR/NamingSystem/ca-on-license-physician",
      "preferred": false,
      "comment": "A registered alias for the same namespace, published by the registry but not as its preferred form. Read it; do not author against it."
    },
    {
      "type": "uri",
      "value": "http://ehealthontario.ca/API/FHIR/NamingSystem/ca-on-license-physician",
      "preferred": false,
      "comment": "An http variant of the alias above, and the shape this platform historically wrote. No registry publishes this exact string, and the `API/FHIR` root it uses was an older eHealth Ontario naming-system base rather than the namespace Ontario Health assigns a physician licence to -- its identifier policy classifies that licence as a GLOBAL identifier and points global identifiers at Infoway. It survives in OntarioMD`s HRM specification, which is legacy interoperability vocabulary rather than a statement about authority. Read it; do not author against it, and expect it to shrink rather than grow."
    },
    {
      "type": "uri",
      "value": "http://infoway-inforoute.ca/fhir/NamingSystem/ca-on-license-physician",
      "preferred": false,
      "comment": "An older Infoway-hosted address, published by no registry in this form, but carried by Ontario's published e-referral package and therefore present on Practitioners that arrive through provincial e-referral. It differs from the preferred URI only in scheme and path, which is exactly why it must be matched literally rather than by a substring rule. Read it; do not author against it."
    }
  ]
}