HL7 Ambassador Series: The Continuity of Care Document (CCD)

Keith W. Boone, Co-Chair, HL7 Structured Documents Work Group; Interoperability Architect, GE Healthcare; Co-Chair, IHE Patient Care Coordination Technical Committee, Member, ANSI/HITSP Consumer Empowerment, Care Delivery and Population Health Technical Committees. The HL7 Continuity of Care Document is an implementation guide for sharing Continuity of Care Record (CCR) patient summary data using the HL7 CDA architecture. The CCD has templates for vital signs, family history, plan of care, etc., that can be used in other CDA document types, establishing interoperability across a wide range of clinical use cases. This presentation describes the basic structure of the CCD. Examples of how the CCD is used internationally in IHE Content Profiles are also described.