"On Feb. 17, 2009, President Obama signed the Recovery Act, which contained a number of healthcare provisions, including the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), which nullified these disincentives. HITECH did this by providing physicians payments of up to $44,000 from Medicare and $65,000 from Medicaid â and hospitals getting millions of dollars, with amounts varying based on how many Medicare and Medicaid patients they cared for â to help defray the cost of EHR adoption. Obviously, this is not free money. Physicians and hospitals receive the incentive payments if their EHRs are certified as capable of supporting âmeaningful use.â This, in practical terms, means they can be used for e-prescribing, securely exchanging patientsâ health information and electronically submitting data on the quality of care. The law also includes a penalty for physicians and hospitals that do not implement EHRs: Their Medicare payments will be reduced beginning in 2015. It also empowers the government to set technology standards regarding interoperability and the secure exchange of health information.
A lot of naysayers carped that this was not an economic stimulus that would help get the country out of a recession, so it didnât belong in the Recovery Act. Others complained about the myriad requirements necessary for meaningful use. And not a few physicians were resentful, declaring that they would stop practicing rather than adopt EHRs.
Itâs now been a year since the administration released the regulations specifying meaningful use and what it takes to be certified â the nuts and bolts of implementing the law. The results have been nothing short of spectacular.
As of December 2011, the use of EHR among office-based physicians has nearly doubled to 34 percent with e-prescribing exceeding 40 percent. Over 41,000 physicians have received more than $575 million in incentive payments. Going electronic will allow physicians to more closely track patients, especially the chronically ill, enabling the seamless exchange of data across multiple physicians, hospitals and other providers. For instance, Delaware is completing a framework for the electronic exchange of patient information among all the stateâs hospitals. And the more physicians and hospitals have electronic records, the more effective and useful the exchange of data will be, enhancing patient care, especially in emergencies.
The story is much the same among hospitals: 35 percent have adopted EHRs, and nearly 2,000 of the 4,700 hospitals have, collectively, received more than $2 billion in incentive payments. Every month has surpassed the previous month as measured by the number of physicians and hospitals that have signed up with the government for the EHR program, suggesting that these numbers will continue to rise.
Another great byproduct of the law is that the entire healthcare IT industry has been refocused away from developing new, improved ways for physicians and hospitals to code and bill the insurance industry and the government for payment. Instead, they now focus on making electronics work to improve care, enhance coordination among physicians and facilitate physician-patient communication.
What about jobs? Has this provision of the Recovery Act actually helped the recovery? According to the Department of Health and Human Services, over 50,000 high-paying health IT jobs were created between 2009 and 2011. Additionally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the number of health IT jobs will increase by 20 percent from 2008 to 2018 â faster than any other occupation. And the number of vendors offering EHRâs that fulfill government requirements has tripled to 600.
By any measure this part of the Recovery Act has exceeded expectations. This is all good news for those of us who will be patients, because it is critical to controlling costs and improving quality. We can be sure that after 2015 the vast majority of physicians and hospitals will have EHRs and the lost record or misplaced X-ray will become a distant memory. More important, having almost everyoneâs physician use an EHR in their care will enable hospitals and physicians to finally have reliable data to identify problems and improve care."
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/03/06/an-unsung-victory-in-healthcare/
