Electronic health records – once they're adopted by most doctors and hospitals around the country – could help root out billions of dollars in wasteful spending each year on repeat tests and unnecessary procedures, all the while improving the quality of care, CNN reports. But the technology is expensive, costing an average of $7 million per year per hospital.

The government plans to spend $20 billion in economic stimulus money to help ensure that physicians use e-health by 2014, a deadline some providers say is too tight. But, "the Recovery Act has pushed the opinion about [electronic health records] forward from a somewhat resistant stance to recognition that this is going to happen," said David Blumenthal, the administration's e-health czar (Goldman, 7/2).

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