A CMS official recently announced that Medicare and Medicaid have distributed a combined total of about $400 million in meaningful use incentive payments, Modern Healthcare reports.
Under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, health care providers who demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health records can qualify for Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments.
Status of EHR Incentive Programs
During a meeting of the Health IT Policy Committee, Robert Tagalicod -- director of CMS' Office of eHealth Standards and Services -- said that about 77,000 health care providers have registered for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs.
Twenty-three states have opened their Medicaid EHR incentive programs for registration. Tagalicod noted that more than 3,500 health care providers already have received incentive payments through Medicaid.
In addition, Tagalicod noted that 100 hospitals and 2,383 eligible health care providers have attested to meeting the meaningful use requirements under the Medicare EHR incentive program (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 8/4). However, Tagalicod said that 137 health care providers attested unsuccessfully. He did not provide a reason for the failed attestation.
Implications
According to Tagalicod, CMS has found that health care providers participating in the incentive programs on average met or exceeded thresholds for demonstrating meaningful use of EHRs.
However, Tagalicod said that CMS is taking a cautious approach to the incentive program data. He said it might be "too early to draw conclusions" because early EHR adopters might have more experience with health IT than later adopters (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 8/4).