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To encourage private practices to adopt electronic health records (EHR), CMS will now allow "certain entities" to make "nonmonetary donations" to physicians to be used only for the acquisition and maintenance of EHRs in their facilities, according to an announcement in an August Federal Register (42 CFR Part 411). "These exceptions are consistent with President Bush's goal of achieving widespread adoption of interoperable electronic health records to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare while maintaining the levels of security and privacy that consumers expect," according to the Federal Register.