Electronic records, boosted by stimulus, rush hospitals into unchartered territory - Boston Business Journal:

Dr. Neil Meehan’s computer tells him there are three patients in the waiting room of Lawrence General Hospital’s emergency room, two in registration and one in triage with a nurse. As things heat up, he’ll adjust staffing levels in real time to avoid the kind of bottlenecks that give emergency rooms a rotten name.

“Before, it was a free-for-all. Clipboards were everywhere, there was no way to track the flow of people, and the bottlenecks would never go away,” Meehan said...