Continuity of Care Document (CCD) Enables Delivery of Medication Histories to the Primary Care Clinician.

INTRODUCTION: The goal of the Enhanced Medication History (EMH) project is to provide medication histories to ambulatory primary care practices in the Indiana Network for Patient Care.
METHODS: Medications were aggregated from three different sources of pharmacy data (Medicaid, SureScripts, and the county health system of Indianapolis). Dispensing events were assembled into the Continuity of Care Document (CCD), and presented to clinicians as RxNorm Clinical Drugs.
RESULTS: The EMH project completed 46 weeks of operation in a community health center in Indianapolis. Medication Histories were generated for 10498 office visits for 4449 distinct patients. Seven (of nine) attending physicians responded to a written survey and found the Medication Histories useful (3.9±0.4 on a scale of 1 to 5).
CONCLUSION: Implementation of the EMH project demonstrated the successful use (as well as the challenging aspects) of the CCD and the RxNorm terminology in the outpatient clinical setting.