The traditional workforce in a hospital or physician’s practice in the past would typically shuffle mounds and mounds of paperwork and require file room after file room to contain them. Ciccocioppo says that today, “That's not needed anymore, not in that same way.”

“The people who might have moved that paper in the past have an opportunity now to learn this sort of new world of health information technology and what it takes to support filing electronic documents, and making sure that they get associated with the right patients.”

This type of work is important in making sure that whenever a patient is being discharged or being seen by another physician, that that patient’s electronic record can follow the patient, so that that patient, whenever they show up at a new physicians office, already has a history in their electronic health record. Learn more about electronic health records in this video.

“There’s a win because there are less people that are needed to support the physicians, and there’s more room available to treat the patients,” he says.

Ciccocioppo says that physicians who embrace this technology can provide better care. And, he adds that physicians are going to need cooperation from the patients to be able to enable that better care for file sharing, for example.

But, it doesn’t happen magically. “It takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of people to do it,” he says.