The push for electronic medical recordshas gone through fits and starts over the last decade, but the timemay have finally arrived when it actually makes sense for physicianoffices to go through this disruptive innovation. A confluence offactors including the Obama stimulus bill, CMS incentives, and therapid development of new and exciting technology has record numbersof doctors considering making the switch.

One of the exciting new technologyinnovations is the ability to deliver EMR over the web, rather thanhaving to install the program locally. Web delivery drasticallyreduces EMR implementation costs because it eliminates the need topurchase expensive servers to host the program. A single physicianpractice purchasing a traditional EMR system may have to spendupwards of $25,000 just to get the hardware necessary to use theprogram. However, since most medical offices already have computersand internet connections, no additional hardware purchases aretypically necessary to get started with a web-delivered EMR system.Additionally, web-delivered EMRs reduce a practice's HIPAAliability because sensitive PHI is stored on the EMR vendor's webservers, rather than on the medical practice's local machines-partially pushing the burden of HIPAA compliance on to the EMRvendor.

The federal government is now offeringseveral different incentive programs to encourage providers to beginusing electronic medical records that in many cases covers a largeportion, if not all of the costs associated with implementing an EMRsystem. The Obama Administration's signature piece of legislation,?The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,? includes$20 billion of incentives intended to encourage EMR adoption. Underthis bill, incentives begin in 2011, and a single provider canreceive upwards of $44k over a 5 year period. Additionally, CMS isoffering a bonus to physicians who use electronic prescriptions. Thebonus is equal to 2% of a physician's total charges billed toMedicare in 2009 and 2010, and then steps down by .5% each yearthrough 2013. The CMS e-Prescribe bonus program could yield between$1,700 and $3,500 a year for a typical single-provider, primary carepractice in 2009 and 2010. As is often the case with governmentprograms, the details for the varying EMR adoption incentives are abit murky and still being hashed-out, but medical providers aroundthe country can rely on the fact that the government has pledged tomake a large investment in Healthcare I.T., and as time goes on thepressure on practices to convert to an electronic medical recordssystem will only intensify.