scope:

Continuity of care implies the management of health information in two different perspectives: - local management of information about the subject of care, at the site of care provision, - information interchange between health care providers. This European pre-standard seeks to identify and define those processes which relate to the continuity of care. It specifically addresses aspects of sharing patient related information needed in the process of care. It identifies and defines relevant data and information flows, together with their relationships to "time slots". In order to support the delivery of high quality care to each patient, and to facilitate continuity of care, a full understanding is needed of the temporal aspects of the delivery of health care, the role of each party in the health care process , and their interaction in the patient's environment. The concepts describing the characteristics of the ongoing process of care should not differ in nature from those that are used to structure and organise the data locally in the Electronic Health Care Record.