WASHINGTON--The director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality said the nation is ahead of schedule in meeting President Bush's deadline of having a nationwide health information network and electronic health records for Americans by 2014.

AHRQ Director Carolyn Clancy told a Senate panel Wednesday that the next goal is achieving interoperability of health information technology systems. She said whether they will produce savings is still in question, since analyses are partially based on reducing medical errors: If health IT isn't designed or implemented well, new medical errors and higher costs could result, she said.

Other witnesses told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Technology, Innovation and Competitiveness that the biggest obstacles preventing widespread adoption of IT by the nation's health care systems are interoperability and the cost of obtaining it.

Clancy said HHS has funded more than 125 projects and demonstrations to better understand how IT can improve the health care system.

HHS' American Health Information Community has contracted the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology to develop criteria and evaluation processes for certifying electronic health records.

The department also has contracted four consortia of health care and information technology organizations to develop prototype architectures for the nationwide health IT network, Clancy said.