Through a program that provided grants to three north country hospitals, Samaritan Medical Center received a $500,000 state grant to expand access to primary care by electronically linking its family health centers.

SMC's funds will be used to provide electronic health records that can be shared throughout Samaritan Family Health Centers.

Other grants include $500,000 to Carthage Area Hospital, for the hospital's Community Health Center, and just over $3.2 million for Alice Hyde Medical Center, Malone.

Alice Hyde Medical Center received $325,683 for the relocation and expansion of an existing primary care outpatient clinic to become a stand-alone, open-access primary care health center, and $2,900,000 to be split with Franklin County for the consolidation of two existing nursing homes into one operation.

Samaritan spokeswoman Krista A. Kittle said the hospital's goal is to have everything fully implemented next year. For now, she said, SMC is looking at different vendors and software, and doing research in terms of what programs fit best.

The grant includes the costs of software, necessary training and system implementation.

"Right now we don't have an electronic health record," Ms. Kittle said. "We're not automated. Really what this will do is link, electronically by one software program, all of the clinics."

Clinics that will be connected include the Samaritan Family Health Centers in Clayton, Lacona and Watertown, Samaritan Urology, the behavioral health clinic and the Woman-to-Woman program in the Samaritan Medical Center plaza.

There are some limited capabilities now, Ms. Kittle said, where a woman can get a mammogram done at Woman-to-Woman, and through radiology software, physicians can access it from their office to get results.

"This, however, will allow them to take that information and add it to the patient's medical record, so for the patient, everything will be in one place," she said. "Additionally, there will be some capabilities to do some orders, such as lab work or X-rays."

Eventually, Ms. Kittle said, physicians will be able to send electronic prescriptions to a pharmacy.

"If a patient is keeping a list, it may have changed, or they may have forgotten to add to it," she said. "It's also not very convenient for a patient to bring a bag of medication into the doctors."

The funds were awarded late last month through the Health Care Efficiency and Affordability Law for New Yorkers.

The law authorized the state to appropriate up to $1 billion for projects to support mandates of the Commission on Health Care Financing in the 21st Century, also known as the Berger Commission.