One year after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) set criteria for electronic health records, 70% of hospitals expect to meet the first phase of the Meaningful Use guidelines this year.

Yet, 78% expect to continue to treat patients using paper records for up to five more years despite the financial incentive for meeting these requirements and an electronic medical record’s (EMR) inherent promise of a paperless treatment cycle.

These are two findings of a recent survey from Iron Mountain that asked over 200 health information professionals how they’re scanning paper patient records and planning to use them moving forward as part of their transition to an EMR system. The results reveal hospitals — lacking guidelines from CMS for scanning paper patient files — are taking different approaches to digitizing records, with scanning budgets sometimes exceeding $100 million.