Healthcare IT incentives to enable EHRs, improve care and lower costs; provider readiness will be key factor in success

ATLANTA, Feb. 19, 2009 - The passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes landmark legislation designed to promote the use of healthcare information technology (HITECH) for all healthcare providers. The HITECH provisions endorse and provide incentives for the rapid implementation and meaningful use of technology to reduce healthcare costs by improving quality, safety and efficiency. McKesson has responded to the legislation with its Achieve HIT program for physicians and health systems. Achieve HIT is designed to help healthcare providers optimize and accelerate their efforts to improve care delivery as they put plans in place to achieve meaningful use and qualify for the new government incentives.

As part of the Achieve HIT program, McKesson will provide an online information resource for physicians at www.mckesson.com/doctors. The company also is offering a free physician hotline at 1-877-EHR-1MCK, providing physicians or their staff the ability to talk with McKesson representatives about their electronic health record (EHR) requirements.

These initiatives are part of a larger ongoing effort to help every member of the healthcare community successfully implement technology to make healthcare safer and more connected. The HITECH stimulus provisions call for reimbursement incentives up to $64,000 per physician based on meeting certain criteria. Hospitals can qualify for $2 million-$8 million in funding. The incentives take effect October 2010 for hospitals and January 2011 for physicians.

“The HITECH incentives represent a significant step toward enabling healthcare that’s safer, more efficient and better connected,” said Pamela J. Pure, president of McKesson Technology Solutions. “By greatly lowering the barrier created by cost, the stage is set to accelerate the adoption of IT, particularly among physicians, the great majority of whom still rely on paper to practice medicine. We also believe the incentives will be a strong catalyst to drive the workflow changes necessary for hospitals to embrace computerized physician order entry and physician documentation in order to fully automate the health system’s EHR.”

Hospitals and health systems stand to benefit from the incentives, whether through first-time deployment of EHRs, completion of existing multi-year health IT projects or developing alignment strategies for virtual information exchange with affiliated physicians. Pure noted that while provisions in the HITECH legislation related to privacy, system certification and meaningful use will take time to clarify, providers should begin planning now in order to qualify for the incentives.

“It’s time to see the industry unite and work aggressively to automate and connect healthcare,” said Pure. “It’s time to leave the paper behind and use technology to create and connect a virtual care team. McKesson is committed to leading this effort and providing health systems and physician offices of all sizes with the information, consultation and planning tools required to build a strategic IT roadmap.