There’s the easy and the hard way.

EMR guru David Kibbe is encouraged that Obama is promising to spend the necessary resources to fund electronic records.

However, using it to simply allow doctors to select from the current potpourri of eclectic, disjointed programs may be easy, but not wise, as “it would only dramatically intensify the Babel that already exists.”

If it were up to me (and alas, it often isn’t), I would encourage the government to give every physician practice a copy of open-source VistA, and use the funds for implementation and support. This will guarantee doctors and hospitals nationwide will be able to share information on the same electronic record system.