Institutions like the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center pioneered the use of electronic medical records and demonstrated the abundant benefits to patients and health-care providers. The federal government finally has caught on and is moving to cure the health-care system of an addiction that contributes to medical errors and high costs. It's an addiction to paper.

In this digital era, when documents are stored and retrieved electronically, most lab test results, prescriptions and other medical records are still kept on paper -- often in indecipherable, chicken-scratch handwriting.

President Bush earlier this year proposed a major health information technology program. Rep. Tim Murphy, a Republican from Upper St. Clair, later introduced legislation that would help fund creation of electronic medical records systems in doctors' offices and hospitals.

Costs are a major obstacle to a nationwide medical records system. A physician with a small practice could face a bill of $35,000 or more to get a system in operation, and for small hospitals the costs could run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A federal commission has just given Congress recommendations on removing another obstacle. It is "interoperability," meaning that software sold by different vendors must be able to open each other's files and exchange data. The commission's 250-page report may unify and speed the efforts already under way to expand use of electronic medical records.

Rep. Murphy's bill is among a dozen that are pending on electronic medical records, and the commission's report is the fifth on this topic in 2005 alone. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that a national electronic medical records system would save $87 billion a year and prevent needless deaths and injuries from medical errors.

Congress must take the next steps to make those benefits a reality for all patients. It should move ahead with Rep. Murphy's bill and other legislation that brings medical record-keeping into the 21st century.