$23 billion dollars has been allocated by the President Obama’s stimulus package for the creation of a national electronic medical record for every American by the year 2014. This target date was originally set down by the previous administration. The electronic medical records (aka electronic health record) will contain a recorded history of allergies, medications, lab test findings and notes on medical procedures.

This will require a huge cooperative effort on the part of the government, privates industry and providers of health care.

Vincent Ciotti, who has worked in the healthcare information system for over 35 years stated, “While President Obama is to be applauded for his interest and attempts to move this standard along, but the difficulties will lie within determining procedures. This is not as simple as handing everyone their EMR. Case in point, this was advocated back when Bush was president.”

But providers have already figured out a way to proceed in Westchester and Rockland New York counties.

An example of this can be seen at Nyack Hospital, which is a 375-bed facility. That hospital is already poised to bring part of their EMR online in January of 2011. In addition, the Westmed Medical Group, located in White Plains, NY, has been using EMR technology for a number of years. Their medical director, Dr. Barney Newman, noted that the Group began with 20 records department employees. Currently, even with a growth of three times their original practice, they’re able to keep their record’s staff down to 6-8 people.

Dr. Newman has estimated that the practice has generated over 300,000 electronic medical records while still maintaining a high level of efficiency. The Group, as an early implementer of EMR technology, worked closely in conjunction with its vendor, GE. In this way, suggestions were made to develop improvements that fit their practice and enhanced the manufacture’s product.

At this time, there are four different types of EMRs offered: those offered by those who reimburse health care (insurance companies, etc.), those offered by providers of health care, employer sponsored and those offered by various commercial enterprises (GE, Google, Microsoft and McKesson).

John Volanto, Nyack Hospital’s chief information officer, has pointed out that McKesson’s EMR solution is designed for hospitals that have limited IT staff – such as community hospitals. Volanto has stated that he expects that the McKesson system will move medical documentation from paper to medical data sharing, documenting and managing through their comprehensive EMR solution.