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February 3, 2009Mark Leavitt, M.D., chair of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology has written a letter of support to Congress for the proposed $20 billion for health I.T. initiatives included as part of the proposed economic stimulus legislation package. The package can be read here. Mr. Levitt’s letter can be read at the CCHIT blog, http://ehrdecisions.com/.
The federal funds would be applied to help providers adopt health information technology, such as EMR. Health Information Technology reports:
“The funds include, among other initiatives, $250 million to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, $300 million to support health information exchanges, $540 million for Medicare incentives to providers adopting I.T., $360 million in similar Medicaid incentives, and grants to states to promote health information technology.
“Under the legislation, Medicare would provide incentive payments of $41,000 over five years for physicians not based in hospitals that adopt electronic health records. The incentives, however, would drop sharply for physicians not adopting EHRs until after 2013.
“Hospitals also would receive Medicare incentives for EHR adoption, with lower payments for those starting after 2013.”
Read the full article “House Bill Covers I.T. Funds, HIPAA“. The Congressional Budget Office also agrees that the authorization of these funds will encourgage and speed physician adoption of EMR.
“Under current law, CBO estimates that about 45 percent of hospitals and 65 percent of physicians will have adopted qualifying health I.T. in 2019,” according to an analysis requested by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “CBO estimates the incentive mechanism would boost those adoption rates to about 70 percent for hospitals and about 90 percent for physicians.” (Read more here)
A recent vendor survey supports these results, reporting that “A survey of nearly 2,000 professionals in physician group practices finds strong support for the health information technology grants, loans and incentive payments to accelerate I.T. adoption that are in the economic stimulus bill.” We will continue following this legislation and its effects on EMR adoption. For more reading on this subject, see our previous post here.
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Horaayy..there are 2 comment(s) for me so far ;)
Nice post,
I hope that they do follow this legislation…
Thanks for writing about it
Does the American economy have any effect on the funding provided by the Universities for MS?