On Tuesday, Vice President Biden unveiled a new White House report detailing how last year's economic stimulus package is facilitating advancement in health IT, Modern Healthcare reports.
The stimulus package -- known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- contained about $20 billion for health care IT.
ARRA Goals
Of the $20 billion in funds for health IT, $2 billion is being spent primarily to help hospitals, health care providers, states and other entities adopt health IT programs, according to the report.
The remaining funds will be used for incentive payments that will be made to health care providers who demonstrate "meaningful use" of health IT. The incentive payments are slated to start in 2011.
Another goal of ARRA is to expand access to broadband, which will allow for the adoption of electronic health record systems and electronic prescribing platforms. The act provided $6.9 billion toward broadband expansion (Lubell, Modern Healthcare, 8/24).
States' Use of Stimulus Funds
States also are using stimulus funding for health-related projects.
In Delaware, state officials are using stimulus dollars provided through NIH to fund research projects at the University of Delaware.
One project focuses on improving "cyber infrastructure," which will enable the school to participate in biomedical research that often requires collaboration with individuals outside of the state, according to Karl Steiner, senior associate provost for research development at the university.
In addition, the state's health information network received $4.68 million in stimulus funds to establish systems that facilitate the processing of Medicaid claims, among other projects (Starkey, Wilmington News Journal, 8/25).
Other Recovery Act Projects
The report also detailed how medication errors would be reduced because of health IT efforts funded through the stimulus package. For example, as many as 10 million outpatient medication errors are expected to be avoided by 2013, up from three million last year (Radnofsky, "Washington Wire," Wall Street Journal, 8/24).
The report also says that the cost of mapping a personal human genome will decrease to less than $1,000 in the next five years because of medical investment funds provided by the stimulus package (CNN, 8/24).