The ARRA (Am. Recovery & Reinvestment Act) was passed in Feb. 2009. It contained a subsection (the HITECH Act) that provided money for healthcare EMR adoption. The funds were available to practices that serve CMS patients, based upon their having EMRs in place that achieve "Meaningful Use" (MU), which was not defined in the HITECH Act, but left to the NCVHS to subsequently define. The MU terms were defined on Dec. 30, 2009 in a 550 page document issued by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC). In a related announcement, the ONC has issued final rules on July 13, 2010. The are available at the ONC website.

As the above table shows, the US Government is making up to $44,000 incentive available to all physicians in private practice to defray the costs of their adopting an EMR. However, if an eligible physicians does not adopt by 2015, they will be subject to reduction of Medicare payments as a penalty for not adopting. The Medicare EHR incentive program will also provide incentive payments to eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals (CAHs) that are meaningful users of certified EHR technology.

The entire Interim Final Rule for Meaningful Use is found at the healthIT.hhs.gov Website. Our MU Icon tab has a link to the entire final rule. Inside the EHR Selector™, once subscribers sign-in, you will find individual criteria that are necessary to meet "meaningful use" requirements, indicated with an "mu" tag. Access the help screens for more information on individual "mu-tagged" criteria.