Officials with the University of South Florida's College of Public Health today held a news conference to discuss the $5.9 million in stimulus fund that will help the department hire, train and deploy approximately 100 people to go throughout the state to train doctor's offices on using paperless technology.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, an estimated 44 percent of office-based physicians used at least some electronic medical or health records in 2009. But only about 6.3 percent of those doctors are using a fully functional electronic system, according to the center.
USF President Judy Genshaft said the university's health school now becomes one of the first regional initiatives in the country to invest stimulus money to work on electronic records.
This article appears in Apr 7-13, 2010.