The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is using incentives to try and get more doctors to use electronic health records:

The federal agency presented the pilot incentive project to Maryland's doctors Thursday afternoon in Baltimore. Federal health leaders said they will select 12 communities where the project will launch by June....

Converting an individual patient's health records to a digital format could help reduce medical errors and health care costs. The records could be viewed by a patient's doctors, hospitals, pharmacists and insurance carrier.

But state medical leaders said the costs of installing and operating a system may be prohibitive for some physicians in Maryland. The systems can cost $40,000 to $50,000 on average to implement, said Marty Wasserman, executive director of MedChi, the state's medical society.

There has been a lot of discussion about why many doctors fail to keep up with new technology for health records. Is the idea that electronic health records will help reduce errors and save money a widely-accepted myth that, like the idea that preventative medicine will save money in the long run, will be exposed to be false? Or is it really a good idea? Is this CMS initiative the best way to achieve this? I really don't know. If someone reading this has some good resources on this topic, I'd love to see them.