We have reached a fulcrum point in the history of health care in our country. The announcement on Tuesday of the final rule establishing Medicare and Medicaid incentive programs for the meaningful use of electronic health records (EHR) creates a framework for change that will have reverberations throughout the health care industry. An important companion rule (pdf) was also released that establishes standards, specifications and certification criteria for EHRs. David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health information technology at Health and Human Services (HHS), and Marilyn Tavenner, principal deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), published an overview of the meaningful use rule in the the New England Journal of Medicine . John D. Halamka, of both Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, wrote an excellent analysis of the final standards rule on his blog . I expect in the coming months there will be a great de...