New Jersey Hospitals in the Digital Dark Ages [AUDIO]

Hospitals across the Garden State are way behind the times when it comes to inter-department communication and reaching out to vital personnel when they're needed.

Some are still using beepers to contact doctors in emergency situations.

The result is a lot of wasted time and millions of dollars a year in lost productivity, but things are beginning to change.

"There is a major technology revolution occurring in healthcare today, but these systems can cost into the millions of dollars for just a single hospital, and then there's just the sheer complexity of the healthcare system," says the Vice President of Communications for the New Jersey Hospital Association, Kerry McKean Kelly.

She says the goal is to have all hospitals, all physicians, pharmacies and insurance companies - everyone working together on an integrated system that shares patient information, but it's a huge undertaking.

"Patient security, security of their confidential health information, is vitally important in this transition, and quite frankly it does slow down the process of adopting the technology, but if you have better communications, better information and better continuity of operations, you're going to make healthcare better for everyone.