Doctors Join to Promote Electronic Record Keeping - New York Times

Doctors Join to Promote Electronic Record Keeping - New York Times

Doctors Join to Promote Electronic Record Keeping

Stewart Cairns for The New York Times

Dr. Eugene Heslin receives computer training
from Lori Jesman.

By MILT
FREUDENHEIM

Published: September 19, 2005

He is a self-described techie, but that did not help Dr. Eugene P. Heslin
harness the wonders of electronic medical records. The technology seemed too
complicated and expensive for a small medical group like his six-doctor family
practice in rural upstate New York

"The large groups can afford the software," said Dr. Heslin, a
family physician in Saugerties. "For the onesies and twosies, small
groups like ours, there is no profit margin."

Now, though, in a collaboration with 500 like-minded doctors, as well as
hospitals, insurers and employers in two Hudson Valley counties, Dr. Heslin
and his partners are clearing barriers that have made modern information
technology inaccessible to the hundreds of thousands of small doctors' offices
around the nation.