Gov. Jim Doyle revealed Friday that $30 million of his budget will be used to implement electronic medical record systems in hospitals in an effort to curb medical errors, decrease inefficiency and reduce the cost of health care.

The governor said the plan, if approved, would be up and running by the end of 2007.

Many health care systems currently use a paper system for records.

"Medical errors will be cut by 50 percent with electronic medical record systems," said Karen Shapiro, a process analyst for Milwaukee-based Columbia St. Mary's Hospital.

Medical errors account for 98,000 American deaths each year, according to The Institute of Medicine. Shapiro said the new system will reduce medical errors by making the charts more readable, improve decision-making and save money.

Martty Berner, a clinical instructor in the College of Nursing, agreed.

"The electronic system would decrease the cost of storing paper," she said. "There is a huge amount of paper that must be stored and be kept available in the future. Using an electronic system would be more transportable, save money and reduce error."

The price of requesting patient records varies by hospital but the average cost is $7, according to Michael Gorczynski, director of Medical Informatics at Aurora Health Care.

"At Aurora, we have about 550 physicians looking up 300,000 charts per month," he said. "At $7 per chart, that adds up . I was frustrated on a daily basis by not being able to get to the medical records that I needed."

One worry about the electronic medical record systems, however, is access to a patient's information.

"A major concern is privacy," said Jay Goldberg, director of Health Care Technologies Management at Marquette. "Someone could tap into your personal records and obtain them."

Shapiro shared this concern.

"There was only one person to a paper chart at one time," she said. "But with the electronic records, they can be viewed by many people at one time."

The switch to electronic medical record systems is a national move. According to Goldberg, the president has been pushing this system, and many hospitals have already adopted it.

"Electronic systems have been out there for years," Shapiro said. "It's a great system."