The Consolidated CDA Implementation Guiide (C-CDA IG) is developed by US stakeholders through the HL7 standardization process. Version 1.1 of the Implementation guide is a requirement for Certified EHRT in the Meaningful Use Stage 2 program, and version 2.1 is required for MU3 and newer regulations.

The C-CDA Implementation Guide is organized in a hierarchy of templates. The top-level templates are the document-level templates, which contain a header template, and several section templates. Some section-level templates are only described as narrative templates, with no associated discrete data entries. Other section-level templates contain either optional or required discrete data entries. The following sections contain an overview of the relevant templates.

B.1 Document Templates