Announced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the proposed standards are aimed at helping release $19 billion in federal stimulus funds. The standards are expected to be developed over a period of several months. The program is designed to coax the medical establishment to move away from paper files and to pave the way for currently incompatible files to be accessible in standard formats.

"Widespread adoption of electronic health records holds great promise for improving health care quality, efficiency, and patient safety," said the Health and Human Services Department's David Blumenthal in a statement. Blumenthal is the health department's national coordinator for Health information Technology.

Hospitals and doctors who adopt the program's new standardized software would receive bonuses for using the software. The existing patchwork of paper files and incompatible electronic files has caused many segments of the medical delivery system to hesitate to move to new electronic systems, because no meaningful standard exists. The CMS hopes to pave the way to a workable standardized system though stimulus funds.

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