Hurricane Katrina illustrated what happened when medical records are on paper instead of stored on a computer.
They washed away, rendering thousands of people unable to get prescriptions, notify doctors about allergies or receive medical help.
"We have to bring our best technology to bear in the health care system," said Dr. David Satcher, former U.S. surgeon general and director of the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine.
Federal stimulus money is available for health care providers in Georgia to convert paper medical records to electronic ones, Satcher and others said Thursday at Georgia State University. Though such technology has been available for years, fewer than 4 percent of doctors have made their medical records completely electronic, said Janet Marchibroda, chief health care officer for IBM, who said the stimulus dollars will help with some of the conversion challenges.
Stimulus money will be funneled through Medicare and Medicaid programs as well as through the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Marchibroda cautioned that it's spent wisely.
"We could really mess this up by just pushing a lot of money out there but not focusing on improving health information technology," she said.
Georgia's Department of Community Health has received $339.6 million in the first batch of stimulus money. Rhonda Medows, the state's health officer and commissioner of the community health department, said the agency is waiting for federal guidance on how it can use that money to reimburse health care providers who buy an electronic health record system.
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