The relation between an information entity and its referent can be described as a second-order statement, as long as the referent is a type. This is typical for medical discourse such as diagnostic statements in electronic health records (EHRs), which often express hypotheses or probability assertions about the existence of an instance of, e.g. a disease type. This paper presents several approximations using description logics and a query language, the entailments of which are checked against a reference standard. Their pros and cons are discussed in the light of formal ontology and logic.