eClinicalWorks Announces Support for Continuity of Care Record Standard
Leader in Electronic Medical Records and Practice Management Helps Drive Standard to Improve Patient Care, Records Portability and Interoperability
WESTBOROUGH, Mass.—October 19, 2005—eClinicalWorks, the leading provider of integrated end-to-end ambulatory electronic medical records (EMR) and practice management systems for multi-location, multi-specialty medical practices, today announced support for the Continuity of Care Record (CCR) standard. The CCR is a standard specification being developed jointly by ASTM International, the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), the Health Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS), and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). According to the ASTM, the CCR is intended to foster and improve continuity of patient care, ensure systems interoperability, reduce medical errors, and assure a minimum standard of health information transportability when a patient is referred or transferred to, or is otherwise seen by, another provider.
The CCR is being developed in response to the need to organize, make interoperable and transportable a set of basic patient information, according to ASTM, consisting of the most relevant and timely facts about a patient's condition.
eClinicalWorks' EMR solutions collect and technically support CCR data sets, which include patient and provider information, insurance information, patient's health status (e.g., allergies, medications, vital signs, diagnoses, recent procedures), recent care provided, as well as recommendations for future care (care plan) and the reason for referral or transfer. According to the ASTM, this minimum data set will enhance the continuity of care by providing a method for communicating the most relevant information about a patient and providing both context and support for the electronic health record (EHR) through extensions.
"The CCR standard will help improve quality of patient care and ensure the seamless transport and sharing of patient records," said Girish Kumar, founder and vice president of sales/marketing, eClinicalWorks. "eClinicalWorks applauds and supports these efforts. Our customers can be confident their EMR and PM solution can technically facilitate CCR data set collection and distribution."
eClinicalWorks improves practice efficiency and team productivity, enhances quality of patient care, increases patient satisfaction, minimizes risk of medical errors and maximizes practice profitability. eClinicalWorks EMR allows physician practices to manage the patient flow, specifically letting practices access patient records immediately--either in-house or via remote access--electronically communicate with the referring physicians and securely send consult notes and clinical data. eClinicalWorks PM eliminates the roadblocks inherent in healthcare billing processes, allowing practices to submit claims electronically, track the status of claims and communicate online with payers to confirm patient eligibility, what services will be paid and when.
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