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# Jurisdictions

A jurisdiction is a regional health service area with its own clinical framework. CAIL Health supports multiple jurisdictions from the same API surface. Endpoint behavior varies by jurisdiction in defined, predictable ways.

## What varies by jurisdiction

* **Emergency department terminology.** The label patient-facing copy should use for emergency departments (for example "A\&E", "ED").
* **Risk tier coding.** The FHIR coding used to express patient risk classification.
* **Provider taxonomy.** The codes and labels used to describe provider types.
* **Wait-time metric codes.** The FHIR `Observation` coding for the wait-time signals returned by the API.
* **Provider directory source.** Where the canonical list of providers and locations originates.

## What does not vary by jurisdiction

* The resource shapes (every clinical payload is still FHIR R4).
* The authentication model (Firebase for patients, Auth0 for commissioners).
* The pagination contract.
* The error envelope.
* The general endpoint structure.

## Resolving the active jurisdiction

The jurisdiction a request operates against is determined by the caller's context:

* **Patient clients** are scoped to a jurisdiction at sign-in based on their location and the configured boundaries. The active jurisdiction is included on relevant responses.
* **Commissioner clients** operate within the jurisdiction of the organization their account belongs to.

Where a response value comes from jurisdiction-specific terminology, the resource carries the appropriate FHIR coding so clients do not need to apply per-jurisdiction logic.

## Currently supported jurisdictions

A live list of supported jurisdictions, along with their codes, terminology, and boundaries, is returned by the public jurisdictions endpoint.