Hospitals criticized over offers to earn or save money by sharing electronic patient data

The landscape for electronic health records in North Texas and across the nation has changed dramatically during the first half of this year.   Every major health system in the area has implemented, or has budgeted to implement, a system for sharing patient records electronically.

Electronic records are expected to allow doctors to coordinate care for the sickest patients, eliminate paper-transcribing errors that lead to inaccurate prescriptions, and avoid duplicate lab and imaging tests.

Medical errors alone cost the country $37.6 billion each year, according to the Institute of Medicine, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health research group based in Washington, D.C.