CDA Hierarchical Description

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1 CDA Overview

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2 Introduction to CDA Technical Artifacts

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3 CDA Document Exchange in HL7 Messages

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4 CDA Templating

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5 CDA R-MIM

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6 CDA Hierarchical Description

NOTE: The definitive description of HL7 Hierarchical Description development and interpretation can be found here.

The CDA Hierarchical Description POCD_HD000040 as an Excel View can be found here.

The CDA HD is the definitive source for CDA conformance rules, and serves as the source from which the CDA Schema is derived. While a CDA instance must validate against the CDA Schema, it must also adhere to the conformance rules stated in the CDA Hierarchical Description, and to the rules expressed in the narrative of this specification.

HL7 enables conformance specification at the level of each RIM attribute. RIM attributes can be defined as "Required", in which case the originator must populate the attribute where a value is known even if the cardinality is optional, and "Mandatory", in which case the originator must populate the attribute with a non-NULL value in all cases.

In CDA, Release Two, the "Required" and "Mandatory" conformance indicators are applied as follows:

• Required attributes:
  • Section.text
  • All attributes where lower cardinality is greater than 0.
• Mandatory attributes:
  • ClinicalDocument.typeId
  • RIM Structural Attributes
    • ClassCode
    • MoodCode
    • TypeCode
    • DeterminerCode
  • Context attributes
    • contextControlCode
    • ContextConductionInd

Note: Note that where Mandatory attributes have a default or fixed value supplied in the CDA HD, the instance need not contain a value. In such cases, the receiver must assume the default value.

7 CDA XML Implementation

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8 Appendix

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