EHRs More Accepted, But Not Yet Seamless

By: Shannon Dauphin Lee

Electronic health records have been in the making for well over a decade, but with new requirements of the Affordable Care Act, the timetable for going electronic has moved from "someday" to "now." The 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) has placed a 2015 deadline for medical providers to move from paper records to electronic. To compensate for the time and money involved in the three-stage transition, the government has offered $20 billion in incentive payments to physicians and hospitals to encourage the adoption of electronic health records. About 3,500 hospitals and 150,000 physicians have registered for the program, according to U.S. News and World Report.