Monika Mathur, MD, a family practitioner at the Fallon Clinic in Charlton, Mass., said she's never seen a paper chart. As one would guess, she is a young physician - with less than three years of practicing medicine. When she went looking for a job, she wanted an organization that was "EMR-friendly." Fallon Clinic's other facilities also have electronic medical record systems. Fallon Clinic is not the norm - at least not for now.

How long the clinic will be ahead of the curve is a big question mark. What's not questionable, at least in my mind, is the proliferation of EMR-friendly healthcare organizations, which will widen the choice of employment for physicians who want a high-tech environment when they enter the job market.

In its report, "Help Wanted: More U.S. Doctors," the Association of American Medical Colleges pointed out that currently 744,000 doctors practice in the U.S. today, but 250,000, or 1 in 3, are over the age of 55 and are likely to retire in the next 20 years when the Baby Boomer generation begins to turn 70. Whether there are enough physicians to replace them is another topic entirely, but the physicians who are coming out of medical schools are more tech-savvy than the generation before them. That's partly due to technology being a part of our everyday lives. It's also partly due to the evolution of medical school curricula at various universities and colleges. Florida State University has a robust curriculum that incorporates technology and medical informatics. There are other universities, including Harvard, Vanderbilt and Stanford, that offer health IT as elective courses.

Then there is the collaborations going on between universities and health IT companies. For instance, the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine and IBM have partnered to build an information and technology-based primary-care practice model. IBM will incorporate its secure information-exchange technologies, EMRs enabled with patient-centered medical home processes, and EHR portals for use by patients, physicians, caregivers and payers. IBM and the University of Oklahoma will also partner to design and deploy a new health analytics platforms that will drive secondary use of the clinical data captured in the EMRs.

Lastly, ARRA's federal stimulus funds for meaningful deployment of EHRs will drive adoption among healthcare systems and physician groups.

Perhaps within 10 years, medical residents looking for a job won't even have "EMR friendly" as one of their criteria for the ideal work environment. The criterion will already be a given.