You're not misunderstanding the basic premise, but on the issue of providing a "human-readable display, don't try to associate independent display values for each tiny observation.
CDA allows you to provide <text>
nodes as part of each segment, which are generally HTML data that will be displayed when read by a human being. For encounters with lots of observations, retain the parsed observations
in the CDA, but each individual observation value should have a null <text>
value (one that doesn't display to the provider). Instead, provide an HTML/readable version of all the observations in a higher-level parent node (so you'd have all of the observations about the "Nose" in a single HTML table stored inside the <text>
node of the segment titled "<title>Nose</title>
". Or - even better - you could even go to an even higher-level segment than this, and store a full HTML version of the entire observation section of the SOAP note along with the general practitioner's notes in the <text>
node associated with the encounter <section>
.
Long story short: formally retain all the values in the CDA, but consolidate all of these observations into a single human-readable display (HTML) in the <text>
node of a higher level node. This will allow a nice-looking display for the provider, but retain all of the codified data for machines.
Have a look at Blue Button Plus for some CDA examples that might make the whole issue a little clearer.