U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is offering new incentives to hospitals and physician's offices to speed the adoption of healthcare IT, and improve healthcare and create jobs.
On November 30, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the new incentives for electronic health record (EHR) adoption. Under the current requirements, eligible doctors and hospitals that begin participating in the Medicare EHR incentive program this year would have to meet new standards for the program in 2013. If they do not participate until 2012, they could wait to meet the new standards until 2014 and still be eligible for the same incentive payment.
To encourage faster adoption, HHS will allow doctors and hospitals to adopt health IT this year, without meeting the new standards until 2014. Doctors who act quickly can also qualify for incentive payments in 2011 as well as 2012.
Federal subsidies are also helping train more IT technicians to build and maintain the digital systems, Sebelius noted. The Obama Administration has launched four workforce development programs that help train new health IT workforce.
Currently, more than 10,000 community college students are enrolled in health IT programs. As of November 2011, universities have graduated oore than 500 postgraduate and master's-level healthcare IT professionals, with more than 1,700 students expected to graduate by July 2013, Sebelius said.
