BOSTON – When Monika Mathur, MD, was looking for her first job in 2007 as a family practitioner, she searched for a clinic that was "EMR-friendly."

"I've never seen a paper chart," the Boston-area physician said.

Mathur is one of a growing number of young physicians more comfortable in a paperless environment than one overrun by files and clipboards.

Government stimulus funds, the proliferation of portable medical devices and the ability to transmit digital data are pushing the technological revolution into overdrive.

The Obama administration has set a goal of establishing an interoperable EHR across the nation's many systems by 2015, and it's providing physicians with incentives for installing an EMR – an electronic record for each patient. Physicians who transform their practices beginning in 2011 could receive $44,000 plus bonuses, spread over five years. The payments decrease after 2012 and end by 2016.

Supporting the effort is the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative, made up of more than 400 businesses, consumer groups, hospitals and health plans who are working to control soaring healthcare costs and boost compensation for family physicians. The collaborative is seeking to redesign the way primary care is delivered with a Patient Centered Medical Home model. Among other things, the PCMH model recommends a whole-body approach to medicine under the guidance of one physician.

It also calls for care to be integrated across patient registries, information technology and health information exchanges.

"Patients are at the center of the medical home model, which advances continuous, uninterrupted care," said Edwina Rogers, executive director of the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative.

Under the model, a physician's office would have an EMR, electronic orders, reporting and prescribing capabilities, evidence-based decision support, a population management registry, a Web site and a patient portal.

This approach was highlighted recently by Caryl Heaton, DO, associate professor of family medicine at the New Jersey Medical School in Newark. Heaton spoke Oct. 14 in Boston at the annual scientific assembly of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

"It's a new standard for patient care," she said, adding that the approach requires "a system that allows information to flow freely."

The Fallon Clinic in Charlton, Mass., where Mathur works, and the 20 or so other Fallon Clinics are ahead of the curve.

"I don't think I could take care of patients as well as I do without EMR," Mathur said.