During the 2008 presidential campaign, part of Barack Obama's health reform agenda was investing and expanding electronic health information technology.

He promised to spend $10 billion per year over five years to "move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records."

Electronic health systems share data on patient characteristics, doctors' notes and instructions, nurse assessments, lab reports and test results. In 2008, proponents in Congress said the computerized systems would cut down on medical errors, paperwork and unnecessary medical tests or procedures. For example, doctors could click medications on a screen and send data to a pharmacy; these "e-prescriptions" reduce the chance of giving a patient the wrong medication, according to recent public health studies.

The Obama administration has paid for digital health systems through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the economic stimulus. At the start of 2012, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had spent $25.9 billion on electronic health information systems, with another $6.1 billion left to spend.  

More money is available through the government health care programs Medicare and Medicaid, which encourage the adoption of electronic health records by doctors' offices and hospitals. By January 2012, incentive payments had reached slightly more than $2.5 billion, according to a recent budget summary to Congress.

In addition to stimulus money, Congress appropriated roughly $184 million in the past three years for the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology -- a division of Health and Human Services -- and the White House has requested another $66 million for 2013. Much of this money also goes to supporting the adoption of electronic health technology.

Although Health and Human Services seems to be playing the lead role on electronic medical systems, we should note that the departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense and the Social Security Administration have launched a joint initiative to share online health records.

Finally, the campaign promise was about more than investment -- the policy was supposed to encourage broad use of electronic medical records. We found some progress here as well. An estimated 26.6 percent of hospitals had some kind of electronic health record system in 2011, up from 15.1 percent in 2010, according to Health Affairs. An estimated 58 percent of office-based physicians used digital prescription systems in 2011 -- up from 36 percent the year before -- according to Surescripts, a private organization that maintains a nationwide clinical health information network.

We should note that the expansion of electronic health records hasn't been entirely a success story. A recent government oversight report revealed medical professionals and hospitals are exploiting electronic systems to overbill Medicare. The government is taking steps to crack down on those practices.

For our purposes here, though, we're looking at the funding and expansion of electronic health information systems.

Obama promised to invest $50 billion over five years -- and we found roughly $34.5 billion invested so far. Most of that came from a one-time infusion of economic stimulus, with steady but relatively small financial support since the 2009 law. Given those investments and the growing use of electronic health records, we rate this a Compromise.