ABSTRACT
In President George W. Bush’s 2004 State of the Union address, he challenged the medical community to eliminate paper medical records by 2014. In support of this challenge, President Bush proposed allocating $100 million of the 2005 fiscal year budget and $125 million of the 2006 fiscal year budget to fund electronic medical record adoption efforts (Fletcher, 2005). President Obama’s 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided $20 billion in Health Information Technology (HIT) funding and physician adoption incentives in the form of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. The act also put into place financial penalties in the form of reduced Medicare reimbursements for physicians who have not adopted a certified electronic health record system by the end of 2014 (Ledue, 2009). The attention given 124to HIT also extends to the state level, as evidenced by the passing of 168 pieces of HIT legislation between 2005 and 2008 (HIT, 2009).
