EHR Incentive Program Gaining Ground

Substantial momentum is building in the EHR Incentive Program as more and more states begin accepting registration and more providers and hospitals begin attesting to meaningful use. Robert Tagalicod, the new director of CMS Office of e-Health Standards and Services, and Elizabeth Holland, CMS director of health IT initiatives group, updated the HIT Policy Committee on August 3, 2011. The audio and slide deck from that portion of the meeting are below:

A new feature of the report was that the medical specialties associated with the eligible physicians and other professionals were separated. The two top specialties are family practice and internal medicine, with Cardiology a distant third place (see page 2 of report below). Twenty-one states have launched their Medicaid EHR program, with Arizona, Connecticut, Rhode Island and West Virginia in the past month according to the report. The CMS EHR Medicaid program also announced the addition of two new states that are now accepting provider registration, New Mexico and Wisconsin. These additions bring the total number of states participating in the Medicaid EHR program to 23.

The full report from CMS is below:

2011 July EHR Monthly Report(function() { var scribd = document.createElement(\”script\”); scribd.type = \”text/javascript\”; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = \”http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js\”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(\”script\”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();