New ONC Scorecard Tool Grades C-CDA Documents

The ONC has released a new scorecard tool which helpsĀ providers and developers find and resolve interoperability problems with C-CDA documents. According to HealthDataManagement, C-CDA docs that score well are coded with appropriate structure and semantics under HL7, and so have a better chance of being parseable by different systems.

The scorecard tool, which can be found here, actually offers two different types of scores for C-CDA documents, which must be uploaded to the site to be analyzed. One score diagnoses whether the document meets the requirements of the 2015 Edition Health IT Certification for Transitions of Care, granting a pass/fail grade. The other score, which is awarded as a letter grade ranging from A+ to D, is based on a set of enhanced interoperability rules developed by HL7.

The C-CDA scorecard takes advantage of the work done to develop SMART (Substitutable Medical Apps Resusable Technologies). SMART leverages FHIR, which is intended to make it simpler for app developers to access data and for EMR vendors to develop an API for this purpose. The scorecard, which leverages open-source technology, focuses on C-CDA 2.1 documents.

The SMART C-CDA scorecard was designed to promote best practices in C-CDA implementation by helping creatorsĀ figure out how well and how often they follow best practices. The idea is also to highlight improvements that can be made right away (a welcome approach in a world where improvement can be elusive and even hard to define).

As SMART backers note, existing C-CDA validation tools like the Transport Testing Tool provided by NIST and Mode-Driven Health Tools, offer a comprehensive analysis of syntactic conformance to C-CDA specs, but donā€™t promote higher-level best practices. The new scorecard is intended to close this gap.

In case developers and providers have HIPAA concerns, the ONC makes a point of letting users know that the scorecard tool doesnā€™t retain submitted C-CDA files, and actually deletes them from the server after the files have been processed. That being said, ONC leaders still suggest that submitters not include any PHI or personally-identifiable information in the scorecards they have analyzed.

Checking up on C-CDA validity is becoming increasingly important, as this format is being used far more often than one might expect. For example, according to a story appearing last year in Modern Healthcare:

  • Epic customers shared 10.2 million C-CDA documents in March 2015, including 1.3 million outside the Epic ecosystem (non-Epic EMRs, HIEs and the health systems for the Defense and Veterans Affairs Departments)
  • Cerner customers sent 7.3 million C-CDA docs that month, more than half of which were consumed by non-Cerner systems.
  • Athenahealth customers sent about 117,000 C-CDA documents directly to other doctors during the first quarter of 2015.

Critics note that itā€™s still not clear how useful C-CDA information is to care, nor how often these documents are shared relative to the absolute number of patient visits. Still, even if the jury is still out on their benefits, it certainly makes sense to get C-CDA docs right if theyā€™re going to be transmitted this often.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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