Federally Funded Electronic Health Recordkeeping: Friend or Foe?

The Federal HITECH Act will provide over $20 billion to promote health care provider use of electronic health records.  Starting this year, “meaningful” EHR users can earn $44,000 under Medicare and $64,000 under Medicaid over 5 years.  Those who enroll early will benefit the most, because nearly 70% of the payments come in the program’s first 2 years.  Physicians who have engaged in PQRI and electronic prescribing in the past few years have put another $6,000 to $8,000 in their pockets.

The Federal push for electronic health records isn’t going away.  Over $7 billion has been released to fund state capacity for exchanging health information across the health care system both within and across states.  The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration received nearly $21 million to develop this state’s health information infrastructure.  The intent is to assure a fully connected national health care IT system to provide all health care providers and their patients seamless access to a patient’s medical information.

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IPAs Again

Independent practice associations (“IPAs”) are gaining momentum in response to healthcare reform and market changes responding to healthcare reform.  In an era when consultants are selling one-size-fits-all solutions, physicians have to consider IPAs as a viable option once again, but they have to fine tune their expectation to recent changes.

            In the thunderous noise wrought by talk about accountable care organizations (ACOs), physicians are scrambling to see where they might fit in the future of healthcare.  While we think those changes will be neither as severe or as pervasive as feared, we do see huge opportunities for ANY organization which can (1) reduce healthcare expenditures, and (2) improve quality.  Healthcare businesses of the future will view utilization skeptically.  Hospitals of the future will look like medical practices with beds.  Medical practices of the future will have a stake in the cost and quality of care being delivered and will view utilization skeptically. 

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