If you’ve ever requested medical records, whether for legal or insurance purposes, you’ve probably received the results in a format known as Continuity of Care Document (CCD). What is a CCD and why is it the standard for digital healthcare record exchanges?
CCD is the standard for digital healthcare information exchange, usually shared in an XML or PDF format. It is commonly used for payment of care, adjudication of claims and for informing healthcare providers about the patient so that all providers have as much information possible during diagnosis and treatment. CCDs are a robust medical record that include a variety of patient information such as:
- Demographics
- Allergies and intolerances
- Medications
- Medical problems
- Medical results
- Lab results
- Procedures
- Practitioners
- Financial/insurance information
- Plan of treatment
- Social history
- Vital signs
Additionally, most electronic health record (EHR) vendors include a combination of encounters, family history, functional status, immunizations, medical equipment, payers, mental status, nutrition, provider notes, and advanced directives in their CCD. Clinical documents using the CCD standard are exchanged billions of times annually, primarily for continuity of patient care and the payment of care but they are used for legal and insurance purposes. The main benefit of the CCD format is that it is standardized, allowing it to be quickly and easily shared between parties with minimal human effort.
The CCD format was a standard set forth by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), the governing bodies responsible for EHRs and health information. The CCD format is specifically meant to help EHRs meet the interoperability requirements necessary for meaningful use certification which dictate that an EHR must be able to create and transmit data in a standardized format that can be securely shared between health systems.
