The Continuity of Care Record (CCR) is an XML-based standard for the movement of “documents” between clinical applications. In 2005 the CCR received a significant amount of air time as the “savior” for moving data between facilities. The CCR can be described in many ways and here is a very condensed version:
- In short, it seems “obvious” that when a physician refers a patient to a hospital the physician should be able to provide an electronic copy of some “relevant part” of the patient’s medical record out of the doctor’s electronic medical record (EMR) or practice management system (PMS).
- In addition, when the patient is discharged from the hospital, wouldn’t it be nice if a discharge summary could move from the facility’s hospital information system (HIS)/EMR into the doctor’s system? That would allow the electronic loop to be closed.
If you want more data on the CCR, there is a much more information about CCR on Wikipedia.
In addition, you may want to read the posting in this blog that answers the question, How are HL7 2.X and CCR related?
