Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) initiative

Dear Members:

As you are aware, Congress recently passed and the President signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Twenty billion dollars of that Act will fund the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) initiative. I thought I would inform you of the highlights of the above legislation as it pertains to physicians.

Two billion dollars will be invested in health IT infrastructure, including a nationwide Health Information Exchange, tools to promote telemedicine, developing best practice guidelines and others. The remaining 18 billion dollars will provide incentive payments to promote adoption of certified EHR’s among practitioners, hospitals and clinics.

Funding will likely occur through the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The agencies responsible for distributing the funds would include the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), CMS, the CDC and others. The Department of Health or another governing body will be responsible for distributing funds to the Health Information Exchange, but it is unclear if there will be a local intermediary for provider funds.

Medicare Incentives for physicians:



Year Maximum benefit per
provider using EHR		 Payment reduction for
not using EHR
2011 $15000 0%
2012 $12000 0%
2013 $8000 0%
2014 $4000 0%
2015 $2000 0%
2016 $0 1%
2017 $0 2%
2018 $0 3%

There will be an additional 10% increase for practicing in a health shortage area. The above payment schedule will be reduced if EHR is not implemented until 2013 or 2014. No incentive payments after 2016. There are no additional maintenance payments in this bill.

The payment for federally qualified health clinics and rural clinics through Medicaid is larger with $21,250 to adopt and $8500/year for 5 years to maintain EHR.

My understanding is that early adopters (those with certified EHR’s) will also be eligible for these payments.

The mechanism for acquiring these funds is still to be determined. Of note, is that funding won’t start until 2011.

The combination of payment differentials for the use of EHR, quality assessments using electronic data and this initiative, will make it a challenge to practice medicine without the use of the electronic health record.

Nitin
N.S. Damle MD FACP
Governor
Rhode Island Chapter of the ACP
(401) 789-0283

Page updated: 3/9/09

[PDF] Acrobat PDF format. Download Acrobat Reader software for free from Adobe. Problems with PDFs?