WASHINGTON, D.C. – With the success of the Continuity of Care Record ballot last week, providers, vendors and industry activists are now looking forward to implementation and adoption.

"Vendors already are beginning to build systems and gear up for implementation," said Dan Smith, staff manager of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) E31 Committee on Healthcare Informatics. "I think we have finally gotten over the hump."

Smith said the CCR standard still requires one more procedural review, with a published standard due in late June or early July.

Last week, voting members of the ASTM's Electronic Health Record Workgroup approved the core data set for the Continuity of Care Record with more than 90 percent of the ballots in favor of the effort. In fact, there were just two negative ballots, although even some supporters requested clarification or expressed dissatisfaction with some elements of the plan.

The workgroup reviewed the ballots, cast over the span of a month, and will be working on editorial changes to addresses many of the concerns, Smith said. Members will also continue to work on extensions for specific areas of medicine such as pediatrics or long-term health. That will be followed by the creation of an implementation guide and publication of the standards.

But co-chair Claudia Tessier, executive director of the Mobile Healthcare Alliance, says she doesn't expect the world to stop while the wordsmithing goes on. "We've got a number of institutions already volunteering for demonstration projects," Tessier said. "There is already widespread interest and enthusiasm in implementing the record."

Unlike a full-blown universal electronic health record, the CCR is designed to capture data from a patient encounter and transmit it to the next caregiver so that the most relevant health information is available at the point of care. Because it is standards-based, the data can be transmitted in XML or HL7 format, or even paper, depending on the preferences of the sending and receiving practitioners.

Pat Wise, director of EHR initiatives for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, said she wasn't surprised by the positive vote. "It was a very successful balloting process," she said. "There was nothing, no significant opposition, to it."

Tessier is bullish about quick adoption, now that the major hurdles are behind the committee. "There are valid and pervasive concerns about workflow integration," she said. "But both practitioners and vendors are working together to make this implementable… We have involved stakeholders from across the spectrum of healthcare to make this happen."