Health IT advocates and stakeholders from the health care industry have pledged to lobby to reinstate into a Senate jobs bill an amendment that would have made hospital-based physicians who provide outpatient care eligible to receive incentive payments for electronic health record usage under the HITECH Act, Modern Healthcare reports.
The EHR incentive payments were included in the federal economic stimulus package last year.
On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced a scaled-back version of the legislation that omitted the amendment (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 2/12).
Under the Senate Finance Committee's proposal, physicians who practice in outpatient or walk-in clinics associated with hospitals would have qualified for the Medicaid and Medicare EHR incentive payments if they were certified as "meaningful users" of health IT, according to Government Health IT.
Reid's scaled-back version omitted the provision, focusing instead on provisions for business tax credits, highway infrastructure and other job stimulus measures (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 2/12).
Several health IT leaders said that the incentive payments were a much-needed fix for the health care industry, and they pledged to press Congress and the Obama administration to provide either legislative or administrative relief, according to Modern Healthcare (Modern Healthcare, 2/12).
Government Health IT reports that health IT provisions in the Finance Committee package likely will be taken up in separate legislation (Government Health IT, 2/12).