With health care reform on Congress’ plate, the Chief Executive Officer of Grove City Medical Center will be headed to Washington, D.C., today to talk about electronic health records.

Robert Jackson said his job will be to give a small business subcommittee an accurate idea of both the challenges and advances of switching from paper to digital records.

“It’s really about how all of this data that we collect about patients can be stratified, understood, queried, and used to care for a patient in ways that we haven’t before,” Jackson said.

Consider Google. Tap a few keywords and the Web site can search and find that information almost instantly, Jackson said.

With health information technology, a doctor could bring up a patient’s history and compare seven years of test results in just a moment, instead of poring through pages of records.

But Jackson said the technology and transfer from paper will take an upfront investment. While many politicians and pundits have touted the cost-saving potential of electronic records, the startup hardware and software come at a price, Jackson said.

Like a hybrid car, the upfront cost has to be measured against the long-term benefit, he said, adding that monthly maintenance fees on the computers and software mean the cost won’t be recouped quickly. Plus, he said, teaching employees to learn the software takes time.

High upfront costs and the employee learning curve may make electronic records difficult to implement in smaller practices, Jackson said.

With government working on a health care redesign that could easily lead to lower payments to doctors, the switch to electronic records could be even more difficult for small practices to implement, Jackson said.

Getting small practices to switch to electronic records will likely require some type of incentive, he said.

U.S. Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, Erie, D-3rd District, who invited Jackson to speak, sits on the House Small Business Subcommittee on Regulations and Healthcare and is planning upcoming legislation to help small medical practices convert to electronic records, said spokesman Zac Petkanas.

Stimulus money may be available in 2011 to some medical practices to make the conversion to electronic records, Jackson said.