The Clinical Care Classification (CCC) System is a free empirically developed system consisting of two parts:
- Standardized coded nursing terminology
- Information model designed for the electronic documentation of clinical nursing practice
CCC supports the electronic capture of discrete patient care concepts (data elements) that measure the relationship of the data to outcomes by documenting the “essence of care.” The CCC System is designed for storing, processing, retrieving and analyzing nursing and allied health professionals’ data in electronic health records (EHR) systems for reuse, summary, aggregation, warehousing, big data uses and evidence-based guidelines. The CCC System (see Framework for details) consists of a four-level framework/hierarchy that allows data to be statistically aggregated upward or parsed downward to the smallest atomic-level data element:
- 1st level: Four healthcare patterns
- 2nd level: 21 care components (classes)
- 3rd level: Nursing terminologies
- 176 nursing diagnoses
- 804 nursing interventions/actions
- 528 nursing outcomes
- 4th level: Three outcome qualifiers and four action type qualifiers. The terminologies are classified by 21 care components to form a single interrelated system that provides the framework that links the diagnoses to interventions, to outcomes and to each other, as well as map their concepts to other health-related terminologies: SNOMED-CT, LOINC, ICNP, ICD-10, etc.
The CCC System terminological concepts use a five alpha-numeric character code for information exchange and interoperability that is similar to International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Health-Related Problems (ICD-10) (WHO, 1990). The coding is used to track patient care for the entire episode of illness and measure care over time, in all healthcare settings, population groups and/or geographic locations.