Growing pains as doctors’ offices adopt electronic records

Despite the IT revolution that has transformed so much of the U.S. economy, the health care industry has not followed suit, and while nearly three-quarters of doctors' offices have some kind of electronic records system, few of them have systems that can easily share information. That digital disconnect is creating an inefficiency that incurs an additional $81 billion in health care costs each year. Unfortunately, because medical information involves so many different data fields, creating any kind of harmonization standard remains an elusive goal, despite federal aid to help doctors to adopt electronic records.