Every day at Sansum Clinic’s 17 health care facilities between Carpinteria and Santa Maria, an old ritual takes place. Couriers bring stacks of paper medical charts for the day’s patient visits.

That’s all about to change, as the Santa Barbara-based nonprofit spends $7 million over the next two years to convert to electronic health records.

Sansum — which is not affiliated with the Sansum Diabetes Research Institute — is one of the largest health care organizations in the region, with more than 150 physicians and 150,000 patients. With assistance of up to $44,000 per physician available in coming years, as much as $6.6 million of the cost of the upgrade could be recovered through the federal stimulus package.

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