What the Economic Stimulus Package Means for Healthcare

I was digging around last night and found an informative webcast which spells out the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It does not answer every question but it certainly helped make sense of the act.

The webcast was presented by Harry Greenspun, M.D., Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Perot Systems Healthcare Services. Click HERE to go to the webcast.

Perot Systems also has several other abstracts available that may help make sense of the stimulus package.

Review & Analysis of HITECH Act

The HITECH Act has been thoroughly reviewed and is throwing up some questions, as projected. One interesting word used in the act is the word "meaningful". Kind of a hard word to measure isn't it?

A company called Chilmark Research has read all 1,000 pages of the HITECH Act and have been posting findings on their blog. Very interesting. READ MORE >>

More Money for Healthcare IT

Looks as though the Senate Appropriations Committee is proposing an additional $3-5 billion for health information technology. With the date set for 2014, healthcare facilities will be required to implement electronic health records and this certainly appears to be assistance towards those costs. Below is an article by Patrick Yoest from the Wall Street Journal.

Proposed spending in the U.S. Senate's stimulus package includes $3 billion more for health information technology than that proposed by the U.S. House, a summary released Friday by the Senate Appropriations Committee shows. READ MORE >>

Panel releases details on $20B in health IT spending

We're finally starting to get a sneak peak at the proposed incentive package promised by the new administration. There certainly appears to be a big push to get physicians and health care facilities on board with electronic health records. Below is a great article from Alice Lipowicz on the Federal Computer Week website.
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The House Ways and Means Committee is calling for $20 billion in spending to encourage the adoption of health information technology, including payments of as much as $65,000 to physicians who can demonstrate that they are using electronic data. The committee's chairman, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), released details Jan 16 of the Health IT for Economic and Clinical Health Act, which is to be included in an economic stimulus package.

The bill seeks to advance the use of health IT, including electronic health records, Rangel said in a news release. The measure would spend $20 billion on incentives to encourage doctors and hospitals to use health IT, the news release states. The incentives include payments of $40,000 to $65,000 to doctors who can show they are "meaningfully utilizing health IT, such as through the reporting of quality measures," the release states. READ MORE >>>