Improving the electronic health record--are clinicians getting what they wished for?

Pleas for improvement in patient health records date back to Florence Nightingale1 and have persisted well into the 21st century. Computer-based records, currently referred to as electronic health records (EHRs), have been proposed as a means for improving availability, legibility, and completeness of patient information. EHRs have been commercially available since the 1970s, but their adoption has become widespread only recently, driven in part by financial encouragement ($27 billion worth) from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.