St. John’s Medical Center trustees on Thursday approved a request to buy $1.2 million of software that will be used to put the finishing touches on an electronic medical records system.

Trustees approved the request as part as an ongoing effort to digitize the hospital’s record-keeping system.

Hospital CEO Pam Maher said staff plans to buy three software programs that aim to digitize how the hospital handles physician orders, administers drugs and tracks a patient’s medical history.

Once installed, the software is expected to standardize medical care.

The new software is expected to include programs that would provide physicians with possible outcomes for treatment decisions they are considering.

The software is also expected to make some aspects of medical care, such as prescribing medication, more efficient.

One of the new programs is supposed to help reduce redundant prescriptions or ones that are not effective by tracking a patient’s medication history.

“It bar codes everything — the nurse, the pill, the patient — and tracks when the medication was given, what kind of pill it was, everything,” Maher said.

In addition, the hospital plans to install a program that will digitize a patient’s complete medical history.

The push for electronic medical records is being driven by a $20 billion earmark in the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

That money was set aside to reimburse hospitals that install electronic medical records.

Hospitals have to front the money to get the software up and running and then must show “meaningful use” by 2013 to be fully reimbursed.

Maher said she expects that the hospital will qualify for about $2 million in reimbursements from the federal government for the software and other initiatives.

Maher estimated that the new software will take at least 18 months to install.