Even healthy people, over time, acquire medical records inches thick. And who hasn't experienced a doctor or nurse thumbing back and forth through all those pages of often-illegible notes, trying to find the last entry relevant to your current complaint? A $3 million grant from a health services corporation that specializes in electronic medical records (EMRs) will help New Haven area health providers go electronic. That will render those bulky records obsolete. Even more important, it will enable health providers to easily share patients' medical records within an institution or with one across town.

The Hospital of St. Raphael was the lead applicant in winning the $3 million grant from the Center for Community Health Leadership, an initiative sponsored by Misys Healthcare Systems, based in Raleigh, North Carolina. New Haven won out over 60 other communities for this first grant the Center awarded, but this one will be followed by others. The grants will help health providers buy and train their people in how to use the electronic software the company produces, creating a win-win scenario.

Dr. John Drury (pictured with a patient in photo above) is the hospital's chief medical information officer, a practicing cardiologist and the moving force behind the grant. "There's a real need to get electronic medical records in use in the community with real patients in a way that eventually we can share data," he said. "There's a lot of interest in sharing information and having patient info move around electronically. The grant will also allow us to have the resources to begin a dialogue among individuals and practices and organizations. That's going to open up the opportunity to reach out to all providers in our community. And one of the reasons we were able to get the grant is we brought all those things to the table "" we have representation from across the spectrum of care, from home health care, long-term nursing home care, inpatient acute care, emergency departments and doctors' offices."

He acknowledged concerns related to privacy but said they are being dealt with.

"On the one hand, electronic information is easier to move around and to share, which is one of its great benefits," he said. But "it potentially makes it easier to be moved for the wrong purposes." He said the technology is available to protect privacy. And look at what's been done up to now, Drury said: "Right now we have information flowing by telephone, by fax machines, by paper-based systems, so in fact having it in a digital format in many respects makes it easier for us to be accountable for where the data's going and who's getting it."

And if you're not convinced yet, think about this: "There's tremendous value in being in an emergency room," Drury said, "unable to communicate your past medical history and having authorized individuals reach into authorized repositories of the information that you, as a patient, have previously agreed to be released."

Leigh Burchell, director of the Center for Community Health Leadership, said many hospitals already have sophisticated privacy systems. She added, "Often, security risks are not the result of the technology but leaving a laptop in the trunk of a car; the new system is no more challenging than the doctor who has a boxful of paper charts in the back of his car."

Burchell said the grant will include training on best practices; and that the EMR system has shown proven reductions in prescription errors and incomplete chart notes. And, she added, "there are no handwriting challenges."