PureWellness, a provider of enterprise health and wellness solutions, recently launched HL7 standards-based Continuity of Care Documents (CCD) for health information exchange between the PureWellness solution and CCD-supported Electronic Health Records to allow members and health coaches to share lifestyle, behavior, and risk information with care providers and their associated data networks.

Health Level (HL)7 standards allow data to be exchanged between disparate systems.   

CCD is the adopted standard by most electronic health records (EHR) systems and the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology, an independent body which has been set up to spur the growth of health information technology. CCD connects patients and providers, and is critical to the successful administration of effective ACOs, PCMH and other patient engagement strategies.

Ken Terry noted that HL7 plans to make its messaging standards available for free to non-HL7 members, probably in the first quarter of next year.

With CCD, members, patients and providers can now share key health and prevention data with other pertinent health information systems, even if they’re on different platforms, allowing patient care to be more coordinated, and playing an important role in controlling healthcare costs and improving health and wellness strategies, quoted Ken Kaufman, president and co-founder of PureWellness.

Terry also revealed that CCD could benefit such public health areas as helping to reduce chronic diseases; improve clinical detail in death certificates to identify dangerous trends, and biosurveillance efforts to detect disease outbreaks.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services now requires healthcare providers who file for “meaningful use” to provide CCDs – a listing of the clinical data recorded by the clinic for each patient visit – to their patients at each patient visit.