WASHINGTON - Electronic medical records are the answer to improving the quality of U.S. healthcare, presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said Thursday In a Kaiser Family Foundation Web cast.

Clinton said she has been "among the leaders" in advocating electronic medical records and she with former Sen. Bill Frist will continue to "push that rock up the hill."

Clinton said electronic medical records could go a long way in improving the varying quality and cost of care now experienced across the nation. " I think it's very hard to think about having a system when you don't have any way for people to move from place to place, job to job," Clinton said. "We saw tremendous gains in the Veteran's Administration healthcare system when they implemented during the 1990s the electronic medical records. And I followed this very closely."

The Veteran's Administration VISTA system use of electronic medical records enabled veterans to travel anywhere and have access to their records. It enabled the VA to begin to do much more in tracking and treating chronic conditions, Clinton said.

Clinton cited independent evaluations revealing VA treatment of diabetes is better than in private systems. Private, confidentiality-assured, interoperable, electronic medical records are "key to doing what we need to do to begin to knit together a system," she said.

Clinton said that healthcare will be her top domestic issue and she intends to offer universal healthcare through her proposed American Health Choices Plan, which will allow a number of choices, both public and private, but all involving portable healthcare records.

She said "the time is right" and her outlook for change is optimistic, despite her 1993 efforts to institute universal healthcare as First Lady.

"If Democratic and Republican governors and legislatures can work together on healthcare, if doctors, nurses, pharmacists, hospitals, patients, CEOs, small business owners can all agree that it's time for a change, then why can't Washington?"