President Bush has made health care a top priority for 2006. Along with increased portability and ownership, an important and controversial aspect of the President’s health-care agenda includes greater access to HIT. The Bush administration has pledged $100 million for HIT, and specifically for a national EHR. Properly executed, nationally available EHRs promise benefits to Americans’ health that outweigh the risks of compromising personal health information.

An EHR system does much more than convert paper records into electronic form. The system of EHRs provides physician order entry, treatment guidelines and protocols, and allows providers instant access to such clinical information.¹ An entire EHR software package replaces time-consuming administrative labor with automatic computer tasks, improving communication, organization, and storage of medical information.

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