Meanwhile, Glenn Steele, president and CEO of Geisinger Health System, said he's no stranger to the sometimes staggering costs of moving to an EMR system. Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger has spent $70 million since 1995 to set up and run one for its 40 hospitals, clinics and physician practices, he said.

Steele said it took some time for the effort to show its potential for cost savings -- and about five years to yield a return on the investment. For example, he said, physician practices reported a 5 percent to 10 percent reduction in productivity during the first six to eight months that the EMR system was in use. But after that, productivity increased markedly.

Geisinger now aims to update the system over the next five years to provide optimized care for patients with chronic diseases, he said.

Geisinger was able to get its 650 physicians to adopt the software early on by making it mandatory, Steele said. The health system also offered limited connectivity to the EMR system to area physicians not affiliated with Geisinger in order to show them its potential benefits and encourage them to link to it.

The health system also tapped several physicians to be advocates for the EMR technology among their colleagues, Steele said. "Without that, you are dead," he added.