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What is CCR?
The CCR, or Continuity of Care Record, is a specification for a subset of patient information that would encapsulate current and the most relevant facts about a patient’s condition. It may also include other details such as advance directives and care plan recommendations. The CCR would be created by the healthcare provider at the end of an encounter or session, regardless of the clinical setting, and handed over to the patient on paper or in a digital format. This will ensure continuity of care as patients move from physician to physician or in case they are referred or transferred to another facility. The future providers would have ready access to patient’s basic and important health information resulting in improved quality of care.
The extensible markup language (XML) is the recommended format for structuring CCR information. By the virtue of XML, the information would be both human readable and computer interpretable at the same time. In simplistic terms, the information contained within a CCR will be XML data conforming to a specific schema. And as such, that information would not only be importable into a clinical system but also exchangeable between otherwise incompatible clinical systems.
Sponsored by ASTM International, the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), the Health Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS), the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and several other organizations, the ASTM E31 Committee on Healthcare Informatics approved the CCR standard in April 2004. A CCR implementation guide is under development by an ASTM task force, and expected to be released by the end of this year.
How is this relevant to my purchase of an EMR system?
Any practitioner who is considering acquiring an EMR should also take into consideration the vendor or system’s ability to respond when the final specifications of CCR are released. A CCR compliant EMR would:
Create files for patients:
Healthcare providers will be expected to handover CCRs to patients at the end of episodes. Therefore an EMR system would require being capable of creating CCR files for this purpose.
Make switching possible:
The CCR standard will allow patient information to be easily imported and exported among EMR applications. This would make possible switching of EMR systems much easier than it is now.
What can I expect of UniCharts™ EMR?
Being capable of exporting patient charts in pure XML format, UniCharts™ EMR is already halfway into compliance. And you can expect a full compliance with the CCR standard in near future, as it will be our top priority as and when the final specifications are released.
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