I Don't know what hospitals you guys have been in, but my primary health care for the last 12 years has been Sutter in California. The hand-offs have been electronic (custom software, not word docs) for that entire time. The Doctors now carry around a tablet as well to update info about a patient. Before the tablets, every room had a PC for updating info. Maybe Sutter is just a special case, I was surprised at the article and some of the comments here.