EMR Meaningful Use Stimulus Money

I’m sure that most people have seen a chart like this one describing the $44,000 of EHR stimulus money you can receive from ARRA:

Source: http://hitanalyst.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/hitech2.jpg?w=500&h=234

When you look at this schedule you will see that you can earn up to $18,000 in 2011 for “Meaningful Use”(what does that mean?) on a “Certified EHR”(certified by whom?).  There is meaningful use chart that we are publishing here for you to review but it is difficult for someone outside of the EMR industry to understand or follow.  In my opinion, there is still a lot of ambiguity and it should not be expected for physician offices to to understand the details of the plan and select the EMR/EHR Solution that is best suited for their office.

Basically, the schedule shows you that you can earn UP TO $18,000 in 2011 (assuming of course that you can show “meaningful use” on a “certified EHR”).  Still to be determined is who is eligible for the full 18,000 stimulus money and who will only receive a portion of this amount.  My thoughts are is that it is never as good as it first seems.  You cannot trust the government when it comes to taking care of the physicians that make our health system so great.

The EMR stimulus plan is receiving a lot of attention but what about the proposed 21.5% decrease in Medicare payments to physicians or the fact that Medicare screwed thousands of physicians out of MILLIONS of dollars with the new Medicare retroactive guidelines. The stimulus money sounds great but I don’t think physicians are buying this government giveaway.  I think most physicians would rather have Medicare stop dropping the RVUs, increasing the red tape, and making last minute policy decisions.

The EHR, EMR stimulus Medicare or Medicaid payments will be paid based on 75% of the submitted Medicare or Medicaid allowable charges. For example, a doctors office which bills out $24k or more in Medicare allowable charges will be eligible for the $18k in EHR stimulus money.  Pediatricians and OBGYNs will not likely have enough Medicare volume to receive any stimulus money so they will have to rely on their Medicaid patients to become eligible.  An office with $13.3k in allowable Medicare charges would only be eligible for $10k in EHR stimulus money.

Remember that the stimulus money is equal to 75% of your Medicare/Medicaid Allowable charge.