Hospitals and doctors offices around California are getting an infusion of federal dollars to ramp up electronic recordkeeping.
California officials say health providers have received nearly three quarters of a billion dollars in federal stimulus money to modernize their record systems.
Dr. Gilbert Simon runs the Sacramento Family Medical Clinics. He says he already has plans for this fall.
“We will be calling in all of our patients with lung diseases to get their flu shots.”
Simon says going digital enables them do things for patients they couldn’t do when they had thousands of paper files.
“I’ll ask my administrator to give me a report of every patient with a diagnosis involving lung issues. We’ll get a list, phone numbers, and we’ll call them, bring them all in for their flu shots.”
Dr. Simon says keeping digital records doesn’t necessarily save a doctor’s time, but those records will be more thorough and useful.
Some 18,000 California providers have received federal money to convert their office recordkeeping.