It's an investment that will take the long overdue step of computerizing America's medical records, to reduce the duplication and waste that costs billions of health care dollars and the medical errors that every year cost thousands of lives.

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Instead, as a result of faulty Medicaid data, medical providers bore the disruption and costs that come from compiling the records demanded, lived with the stress and uncertainty of an intrusive government audit, and confronted the fear that an unjustified audit could result in an even more unjustified law enforcement referral.

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The federal government has tried to promote the switch from paper medical records to electronic ones in hopes of improving efficiency and bringing down health costs.

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The updated rules created the concept of eDiscovery, and raised the costs and time required given the need to examine records stored in an unstructured manner on network drives, PCs and PDAs.

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Mr Thomas told the committee that there was an absence of adequate records authorising such training and that future budgets would not include "such extravagance in training costs".

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For patients, clinicians and hospitals that have massive amounts of clinical content in electronic health records (EHRs) that remains unused, the implications can be rising mortality rates and out-of-control medical costs.

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