The legalAuthenticator identifies the single person legally responsible for the document
and must be present if the document has been legally authenticated. A clinical document
that does not contain this element has not been legally authenticated.
The act of legal authentication requires a certain privilege be granted to the legal
authenticator depending upon local policy. Based on local practice, clinical documents
may be released before legal authentication.
All clinical documents have the potential for legal authentication, given the appropriate
credentials.
Local policies MAY choose to delegate the function of legal authentication to a device
or system that generates the clinical document. In these cases, the legal authenticator
is a person accepting responsibility for the document, not the generating device or
system.
Note that the legal authenticator, if present, must be a person.