Stimulus Incentives for EHR Adoption
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 will make $20 billion US available to hospitals that adopt government certified electronic health record (EHR) systems between 2010 and 2017. Under this act, an eligible 500-bed hospital can qualify for up to $6.1M US in Medicare incentives upon successful demonstration of “meaningful use” of federally certified EHR systems (see Table 1).
The formula for the Medicare incentive for hospitals is derived from the following:
- A base incentive of $2M.
- Inpatient Medicare volume.
- Total annual discharges.
- Charity care volume.
- A transition factor.