By Wayne Grant

wgrant@hometownnewsol.com

VOLUSIA COUNTY - Thick, messy patient charts, hard-to-read physician orders, duplicated procedures - these will someday be things of the past as hospitals and physicians convert from paper to electronic records in coming years, hospital officials say.

It will be an enormous project for health care providers costing billions of dollars. Local hospitals say they are well on their way to meeting the standards. while local physicians are at various stages in the conversion.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has a "Hitech" provision to encourage the health care industry to convert to electronic medical records, said Lori DeLone, chief information officer at Halifax Health.

There is a timetable for health care providers to achieve certain goals beginning next year and to become fully operational with electronic medical records by 2015. The goal, according to ARRA documents, is to improve safety, quality and efficiency in health care.

The ARRA provides penalties as well as incentives for meeting the deadlines for electronic medical records.

Ms. DeLone said providers, both hospitals and doctors, will receive bonus payments for Medicare and Medicade patients beginning in 2011 if they are on schedule for conversion.

In 2015, she said, providers will be penalized in terms of Medicare and Medicade reimbursement if they have not met the EMR standards.

Ms. DeLone said health care providers face a massive undertaking.

She said there are tens of thousands of providers, both hospitals and physicians, in the country and "maybe one percent" have converted to electronic medical records. She estimated an initial cost of $36 billion for nationwide conversion.

Ms. DeLone said Halifax Health began converting to electronic medical records in 2002 and there are many advantages.

"When a health care worker is with a patient that is when they are making decisions," she said. "Having all the current information immediately available to them (with a computer) allows them to make the right decisions."

She said a good example of electronic records enhancing patient safety at Halifax Health is Bedside Medication Verification.

In this procedure, she said, a bar code on the medication and a bar code on the patient's wrist band are verified by the computer to make sure the medication matches the patient.

Ms. DeLone said they are ahead of schedule for meeting the federal deadlines.

Karen Rodriguez, director of health information and compliance for Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center, said the hospital currently has an electronic record system and is "well positioned" to meet all federal deadlines.

"The problem with a paper record is that only one person can use it at a time," she said. "Electronic records can be used at multiple locations."

Information in the computer carries over multiple visits for continuity of care, Ms. Rodriguez said.

"If a patient has an allergy, and perhaps forgets to tell you, the allergy will show up as an alert on the computer," she said. "Also, you can see if a test has been performed and have immediate access to the results. This reduces the chance of repeating tests, which saves cost and improves efficiency. "

The Hitech provision contains security standards for privacy, Ms. Rodriguez said.

"There's a lot involved in encryption of data and there are safeguards all along the way to prevent unauthorized people from getting into the system and also each program," she said.

Local doctors also face federal deadlines.

Barry Mayer, office manager for Dr. Craig Miller of Ormond Beach, said their office is "two-thirds there."

"Dr. Miller has been using electronic records since 2001. When you come in our office you don't see any paper charts," he said. "We expect to get new software next spring and we'll be completely up-to-date with the new standards."

Other doctor offices are still exclusively on paper.

"We haven't started yet," said Judy Driscoll, office manager for Dr. John C. Cullen of Ormond Beach.

"We know we're going to have to convert eventually," she said.

Ms. Driscoll said she heard from other doctor offices that the cost would be from $20,000 to $30,000 to scan the current paper records into a computer system.

Ms. Rodriguez said the goal at Florida Hospital is to have all associated physicians converted over to electronic medical records in the third quarter of next year.