Continuity of Care Record(CCR) Initiative

This CCR Initiative seems to show some interesting promise and I’m very interested to look more into it. I’m not sure how HL7 and CCR will work together(or against each other), but I expect to see the CCR abbreviation to become commonplace with EMR’s.

Here’s some good info I got from this website:

Continuity of Care Record Is Developed by

ASTM International Health Care Informatics Committee

W. CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa., 5 January 2006—A revolutionary new ASTM International standard will change the way in which healthcare professionals preserve and transfer healthcare information about their patients. The standard, E 2369, Specification for Continuity of Care Record (CCR), was developed by Subcommittee E31.28 on Electronic Health Records, which is under the jurisdiction of Committee E31 on Healthcare Informatics.

The Continuity of Care Record is a core dataset to be sent to the next healthcare provider whenever a patient is referred, transferred, or otherwise uses different clinics, hospitals, or other providers. The CCR will bring an end to physicians and other healthcare professionals having to act “blindly,” without easy access to relevant patient information. It will provide the necessary information to support continuity of care, thus reducing medical errors, achieving higher efficiency, and creating better quality of care.

During the past two years, U.S. President George W. Bush has called for greater interoperability of electronic medical records and personal health records. E 2369 represents a major step forward in assisting vendors and healthcare organizations in their search for simple, yet powerful tools that will help meet the president’s objectives.

Eleven sponsoring organizations have supported the efforts of Subcommittee E31.28 throughout this process: the Massachusetts Medical Society, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the Patient Safety Institute, the American Health Care Association, the National Association for the Support of Long-Term Care, the Mobile Healthcare Alliance, the Medical Group Management Association and the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians.

“The wide range of sponsors for the CCR initiative demonstrates its uniqueness as well as its strength,” note CCR task group co-chair Claudia Tessier. “Clinicians, both individually and through their membership organizations, have been the main drivers of the CCR. Through them we have identified the most relevant patient information to be shared among providers. Thus, they and their patients will be its main beneficiaries.”

One of the sponsoring organizations, the American Academy of Family Physicians has launched Project Continuity of Care, an initiative designed to raise awareness of E 2369, to develop and deploy field-capable CCR-compatible software applications and tools, and to accelerate integration of the CCR into existing electronic health record software.

“We now have the CCR standard, an affordable technology for capturing a patient’s most relevant health information and making it personal, private and portable,” said Douglas E. Henley, M.D., executive vice president of the AAFP, in announcing Project Continuity of Care.

“Our aim is to provide physicians and other caregivers with access to this summary medical information when and where it is needed, and to give patients the assurance they deserve that they won’t suffer in an emergency because of lack of information about their personal illnesses or treatment plans.”

The ASTM standards development process and membership on Committee E31 is open to all interested parties.

For further technical information, contact Claudia Tessier, Mobile Healthcare Alliance (MoHCA), Washington, D.C. (phone: 202/352-3019; ctessi@attglobal.net). For committee membership or meeting details, contact Daniel Smith, ASTM International (phone: 610/832-9727; dsmith@astm.org).

Committee E31 is one of 138 ASTM technical standards-writing committees. Established in 1898, ASTM International is one of the largest standards development and delivery systems in the world. ASTM standards are accepted and used in R&D, product testing, quality systems, and commercial transactions around the globe.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

4 Comments

  • The manual creation might not be a solution for physicians as they are still searching for the system which is robbing half the time of all the other systems.
    While HL7 CDA and CCR exist side by side the convergence to CCD is discussed. Unformtunately i can not provide further information on that point.
    More information might be accessible through the “CCR Acceleration Task Force” which may be reach through the Academy of American Family Physicians (ccraccel@lyris.aafp.org).

    With kind Regards,

    Oliver

  • EMR’s are here and they are great if there is a delivery system in place. Many private companies are offering great solutions–even Google is in the market, but wihtout a way to get the vital data into the hands of those who can use it to save lives…why bother?

    In terms of emergecny medical serivces, I worked as a firefighter/paramedic for 20 years so I know a bit about what’s needed in the field.

    We never looked in refrigerators for “vial’s of life” or in wallets for ID cards. What are we going to do when we find a card? Many want you to call a number to have info FAX’d.

    EmergiLink can provide all these EMR’s with HIPAA compliant connection so that this data can actually get into the hands of those who can make a difference with it. EmergiLink uses fingerprint tech. to identify the member and bring up their medical history. We even have real time 2 way messaging to provide an automatic contact process for next of kin.

    Let’s use the technology avaiable today to make the connection…we are ready to partner with EMR companies to give them the delivery system they all need.

    Brett- Founder
    http://www.emergilink.com

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