HealthDay News -- House Democrats, along with President Barack Obama's economic team, have called for investing tens of billions of dollars in health care as part of a sweeping plan to reinvigorate the nation's economy.

An outline of the $825 billion economic stimulus plan, unveiled January 15, included $20 billion to jumpstart efforts to computerize patient medical records. On the campaign trail, Obama said he planned to invest $50 billion over five years in health-care information technology.

"This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests," the president said in a speech earlier in the month.

C. Peter Waegemann, chief executive of the Medical Records Institute in Boston, said only about 20 percent of physicians in ambulatory-care settings today use electronic medical records.

But before rushing to implement these systems, Waegemann said there should be a national conversation to consider the latest technologies and best ways to help medical professionals integrate information technology into their practices. He worries that politicians are being led to believe that cost savings and efficiencies will be immediate, and "this is very questionable."

A large chunk -- $87 billion -- would go to help state Medicaid programs. The recovery package also sets aside $1.5 billion for investment in community health centers.

Another $3 billion would go to preventive care. This would include funding for hospital infection prevention, block grants to state and local health departments, immunization programs and evidence-based disease prevention.

"We don't know exactly the details of this, but conceptually this will go to fill some significant holes that will occur because of the recession and begin to build a framework for prevention as a cornerstone in health reform," said Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association and a fellow of the American College of Physicians.

A total of $1.1 billion is designated for comparative effectiveness research.

A January 2008 Institute of Medicine report, Knowing What Works in Health Care: A Roadmap for the Nation, provided a blueprint for creating a national program to assess the effectiveness of clinical services. That report did not include recommendations on the scope of the program; nor did it project the amount of funding that would be necessary to launch such an effort.

But Wilhelmine Miller, an associate research professor in the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University, who served on the committee that issued the report, was pleased by the Democrats' proposed investment.

"It's certainly a substantial enough sum, a good foundation for undertaking the development of more information on comparative effectiveness and disseminating that information to practitioners," she said.

The package also includes $600 million for training primary health-care providers and helping to defray medical expenses for students who agree to practice in underserved areas.

Provider training goes hand-in-hand with expanded access to care, Benjamin noted. "What this shows in my mind is a balanced approach to building a primary-care safety-net system," he said.