The Social Security Administration (SSA) approved the C32 Continuity of Care Document (CCD) developed by Pompano Beach, Fla.-based EHR Doctors. The company has a contract to deliver EHRs in CCD format to the SSA over the Nationwide Health Information Network.
 
Generating CCDs is a critical capability that hospitals need to meet the meaningful use requirements of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The technology enables an interoperable health record that can be shared between organizations for purposes ranging from transitions in care to adjudication of insurance claims. EHR Doctors CCD technology is certified for meaningful use under the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) program.

EHR Doctors' contract with the SSA enables the agency to use EHR Doctors' Medibridge Health Information Exchange to electronically gather health records in support of disability claims, and get them rapidly into the hands of SSA adjudicators.

The technology "will improve our disability programs and provide better service to the public," said Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue. "The use of health IT will dramatically improve the speed, accuracy and efficiency of this process, reducing the cost of making a disability decision for both the medical community and the American taxpayer."

The CCD is a standard developed by HL7, a health information technology standards organization. The document consists of textual information that ensures human interpretation of the document contents and structured parts that allow for software processing. The structured part is based on the HL7 Reference Information Model (RIM) and provides a framework for referring to concepts from coding systems from medical vocabularies such as ICD9, SNOMED, CPT, and LOINC.

"This contract with Social Security is a remarkable opportunity to demonstrate the power of health IT to transform healthcare at every level," said Gerard Reeder, president of EHR Doctors.