President Obama’s Stimulus Package Allocates $20 Billion to Healthcare IT

According to a 2/19/09 online article on the www.AuntMinnie.com website, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed into law recently by President Obama will give healthcare providers, vendors, and end users of healthcare information technology (IT) a $20 billion shot in the arm.

AuntMinnie.com says the legislation authors aim to make the use of comprehensive electronic health records (EHR) available nearly everywhere within 10 years, deployed in 70% of all U.S. hospitals and in 90% of the offices and clinics of all U.S. physicians.

The major healthcare IT goals of the legislation are:

• To require the federal government to take a leadership role to develop standards by 2010 for nationwide electronic exchange and use of health information to improve the quality and coordination of patient care
• To invest $20 billion in health IT infrastructure and Medicare/Medicaid incentives to motivate healthcare providers and organizations to electronically exchange the health information of patients, while preventing misuse of this information by strengthening federal privacy and security laws
• To save the federal government $10 billion by reducing duplicative care and medical errors and improving the quality of care and care coordination.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is to get $17.2 billion for Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement incentives for EHR adoption, and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) will get $1.5 billion for construction and renovation of and equipment for health centers. Several other federal agencies will get additional funds for their healthcare IT projects.