The Continunity of Care Record

For more than a decade there has been agreement in the United States that information technology is a critical part of any effort to achieve high performance health care for everyone. The potential benefits of moving from sequences of disconnected and episodic visits between patients and doctors to continuous connectivity are widely recognized to be of great value to patients, families, communities, investigators, payers and purchasers, employees, health organizations, and physicians.  The Continuity of Care Record (CCR) is a document being developed to foster and improve continuity of patient care, reduce medical errors, increase patients' role in managing their health, enable epidemic monitoring and public health research, and ensure at least a minimum standard of secure health information transportability.  This article discusses the various ways that physicians and patients are able to use this personal health information standard tool.