Rural doctors slow to adopt electronic medical records

These days when you go to the doctor, many rely on an electronic health records system. With just a few clicks of a mouse, they can bring up your medical history, prescribe you medication, or chart your test results. The 2009 Recovery Act actually set aside $20 billion to help health care providers ditch the paper records and go electronic. The idea was to cut soaring health care costs in the U.S. But while physicians backed by large health care groups can afford the system, many rural physicians are struggling to make that transition. The federal government has set a deadline. If health care providers don’t implement an electronic health records system by 2015, they’ll get dinged with Medicare penalties.

The problem for many rural health clinics is they don’t have the money to make the switch. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research last year suggests that costs rise sharply in the first year of adoption for health centers in less tech-savvy locations. And they can remain up to 4 percent higher for years.