An ad hoc committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) identified a litany of potential benefits of including information about individuals' occupations, industry, and work environment in their electronic health records (EHRs). The reason the question was posed at all stems from a provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 which provides hefty incentives for health care providers to convert patients' medical records from paper to electronic form. At the time the bill was passed, one reporter noted that only about 8 percent of the nation's hospitals and 17% of its…
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