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Great expectations for EHR implementation in United States fall short

EHR Connection, March 31, 2008

President Bill Clinton proclaimed in 1992 that all physicians would use computerized records within 10 years and President George W. Bush called for universal use of EHRs in his 2004 State of the Union address.

But despite these grand declarations, 90% of U.S. physicians and more than two-thirds of U.S. hospitals still rely on paper records, The Baltimore Sun reported in a March 2 article.

"Health care is at least a generation behind the rest of society in terms of technology," David Merritt, director of the Center for Health Transformation, a think tank based in Washington, DC, told the newspaper. "Doctors and hospitals don't use the technology we take for granted everywhere else."

The transition from paper to electronic records costs an individual physician or small practice between $40,000 and $60,000. This is a significant expenditure for the typical physician whose annual income is approximately $150,000, says Merritt. "There's no incentive to adopt the technology," he says.

"No one helps them offset these costs." "Pretty much every country in the developed world is doing better than we are," David Lansky, director of the health program at the Markle Foundation, a nonprofit technology think tank in New York City, told the newspaper.

"It's such a convoluted system," Merritt told the newspaper. "When you think about changing that kind of behemoth, it's daunting."

Click here to read The Baltimore Sun article.

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