Patient $ccda-export | Medplum

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The $ccda-export operation generates a Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) document for a patient. C-CDA is the industry-standard XML format for exchanging clinical summaries between healthcare systems, making this operation essential for interoperability and regulatory compliance.

This operation produces a complete or time-windowed patient history in a format that can be consumed by EHRs, health information exchanges (HIEs), and patient portals-enabling seamless care coordination across organizational boundaries.

Internally, $ccda-export builds an IPS-style patient summary ( $summary), then converts that FHIR Composition bundle to C-CDA XML via @medplum/ccda.

Use Cases

Health Information Exchange: Share patient records with other healthcare organizations via HIEs
Care Transitions: Generate discharge summaries or transfer documents when patients move between care settings
Patient Portal Downloads: Allow patients to download their medical records in a standard format
ONC Certification Compliance: Meet certification requirements for patient data export capabilities
Referral Documentation: Provide comprehensive clinical summaries when referring patients to specialists

Try it in the Medplum App

You can exercise this operation from the patient Export tab without calling the API directly. Open https://app.medplum.com/Patient/<PATIENT_ID>/export and use the export format controls to choose C-CDA (CCD) or C-CDA Referral, optionally set author and date filters, then download the resulting XML.

Invocation

GET [base]/Patient/[id]/$ccda-export

POST [base]/Patient/[id]/$ccda-export

curl 'https://api.medplum.com/fhir/R4/Patient/<PATIENT_ID>/$ccda-export' \

-H 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>'

Input Parameters

$ccda-export accepts the same clinical filtering and authorship parameters as $summary, plus a C-CDA-specific type parameter that selects the document-level template.

Parameter	Cardinality	Type	Description
`type`	0..1	`code`	C-CDA document type. Use `referral` to generate a Referral Note. When omitted (or any other value), Medplum generates a Continuity of Care Document (CCD) / Summarization of Episode Note.
`author`	0..1	`Reference`	Reference to Practitioner, PractitionerRole, or Organization to list as the composition author. Defaults to the current user.
`authoredOn`	0..1	`instant`	The date/time the summary was authored. Defaults to current time.
`start`	0..1	`date`	Start date for filtering resources by care date. If omitted, all records prior to `end` are in scope.
`end`	0..1	`date`	End date for filtering resources by care date. If omitted, all records after `start` are in scope.
`_since`	0..1	`instant`	Only include resources modified since this date
`identifier`	0..1	`string`	Identifier for the composition (accepted; reserved for IPS alignment)
`profile`	0..1	`canonical`	Profile to validate against (accepted; reserved for IPS alignment)

Document types (`type`)

`type` value	Document	LOINC	Notes
(omitted)	Continuity of Care Document (CCD)	`34133-9` Summarization of Episode Note	Default export used by the Medplum App C-CDA option
`referral`	Referral Note	`57133-1` Referral Note	Used by the Medplum App C-CDA Referral option. Sets Referral Note document template IDs and uses Reason for Referral / `ServiceRequest` content when present

Example: Referral Note

curl -X POST 'https://api.medplum.com/fhir/R4/Patient/<PATIENT_ID>/$ccda-export' \

-H 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>' \

-H 'Content-Type: application/fhir+json' \

-d '{

"resourceType": "Parameters",

"parameter": [\
\
      { "name": "type", "valueCode": "referral" },\
\
      { "name": "start", "valueDate": "2024-01-01" },\
\
      { "name": "end", "valueDate": "2024-12-31" },\
\
      {\
\
        "name": "author",
\
        "valueReference": { "reference": "Practitioner/example" }
\
      }\
\
    ]

}'

You can also pass parameters as query string values on GET, for example:

curl 'https://api.medplum.com/fhir/R4/Patient/<PATIENT_ID>/$ccda-export?type=referral' \

-H 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>'

Output

Returns C-CDA XML (application/cda+xml) as a raw Binary response.

Behavior

Data collection: Uses $summary (which gathers patient data via $everything) to build an IPS Composition bundle
Document template: Applies CCD or Referral Note document-level template IDs and LOINC document type codes based on type
XML serialization: Converts the FHIR bundle to C-CDA with @medplum/ccda, then returns the XML