Home Forums Discussions General Discussion EHR Stimulus?

Anyone heard if Amazing Charts is certified for the EHR stimulus for 2012?

No EMR is certified - took them a year to define "meaningful use" and now "certified" is next.

I have no doubt that Jon plans on jumping through hoops required.

It seems that anyone with a crown on that I have listened to lately believes that an EMR with a CCHIT stamp of approval is eligible. But, that is not the only requirement....I understand that a certain volume of medicare is necessary for full "reward" and I am certain that there is a whole bunch of other fine print that amounts to "Sorry Charlie, you didn't win. Better luck next time." I will be amazed if any money actually shows up. I wouldn't advise someone to sign on to an EMR conversion because of the stimulus.

The govt has not said what certified is but several sources have said that CCHIT would not be it. The govt would never use an existing standard. Meaningful use was detailed in 200-300 pages and included such useful things as race (which is now on ac demographics under other tab). I agree stimulus money may be vapor but I already own ac and just keep adding features as I cane

Since the existing standard seems to be bad, that is a good thing in this case.

I haven't included race in any chart since I was a house officer more than 30 years ago...doesn't really matter, if you are actually taking care of the person you can see what race they are. I get all sorts of surveys that ask for the racial distribution of my patient population. I can guess but have no earthly idea if my guess is right, it is some of this and some of that.
I think meaningful use is vapor, and expect that "the government" will try and use data ( ?quality and reproducibility?)collected in EMR throughout the country to push practice patterns towards what they have determined is "best practice".
Basically this amounts to a gigantic uncontrolled experiment involving human subjects without their consent. How did we get here?

Heil Hitler!!

I agree with Deborah that the dollars that Medicare is dangling like a carrot out in from of us all, is probably, in the end, a giant mirage. Or, it'll be one giant version of a "bait and switch" game. "We'll give you THIS much money!" Followed later by the "Sorry, Charlie" story...

Having vented my jaded opinion, let's assume for one minute that they actually DO pay us the stimulus money.

Does anyone know if the same amount is given out regardless of what one actually spends on an EMR? In other words, if a practice is deemed eligible for, say, $15,000, does that amount change if they find out that the practice is going to use an EMR that cost them $6000 ? Or is the current plan to give a certain amount out to eligible practices regardless of what EMR they get, as long as it meets the requirements?

Melanie

Me neither. My guess is that they want to use the data to track how the docs follow pts. of various ethnicities, particularly those practices that are receiving federal dollars.

If the data were actually used in a meaningful way, to detect fraud and abuses of federal monies and then do something about it I am OK with that. But I fear that Big Brother just wants to know where the money is going, except for those times when they pay no attention to where the money is going, which is most of the time!

I attended an ehr vender demo last week. One of the speakers seemed well versed on meaningful use. He said cost doesnt matter, the software will just need to meet the requirements. I did learn that one will have to bill a minimum amount of medicare and/or Medicaid- Around 30K.

[quote=MelanieDoes anyone know if the same amount is given out regardless of what one actually spends on an EMR? In other words, if a practice is deemed eligible for, say, $15,000, does that amount change if they find out that the practice is going to use an EMR that cost them $6000 ? Or is the current plan to give a certain amount out to eligible practices regardless of what EMR they get, as long as it meets the requirements?[/quote]
I don't know that answer, but my guess is I doubt they would prorate the stimulus money on the cost of the EHR.

If that's true, then all the more reason to go with an affordable EMR!

Melanie