Source: Medscape EHR Report 2012

The American Academy of Family Physicians supports the switch to digital but acknowledges that it has been difficult for many doctors.

"Right now we’re in a transitional time. Transitional times are tough," says Dr. Jeff Cain, president of AAFP.

Cain says electronic records improve care, and notes that Medicare will start cutting payments to doctors who haven’t gone digital starting in 2015. He’s somewhat critical of the government’s strategy.

"The challenge for the family doctor with the carrot-and-stick approach Medicare’s using is, the carrot’s kind of hard to get to," says Cain.

For its part, Medicare is now worried that part of the digital efficiency it's encouraging is also making it easier for doctors to generate bills, and charge it too much. Doctors say it should be no surprise that systems designed to catch things like medication errors are also catching missed opportunities to get paid.

That unanticipated argument over billing is playing out as federal payments begin to ramp down. They’re being offered until 2021, but the amount available gets smaller every year.

This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes Colorado Public Radio, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

Thw article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.