As you know, the Medicare EHR Incentive Program will provide incentive payments to eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and CAHs that demonstrate "meaningful use" of certified EHR technology.  Registration for the program began on January 3, 2011. 

On August 5, 2010, four major insurers announced meaningful use incentives.  Aetna, Highmark, UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint, at minimum, will align their pay-for-performance programs with federal meaningful use criteria.  In a joint statement, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology David Blumenthal, M.D., and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' Principal Deputy Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, stated:

On March 8, 2010, the American Hospital Association (AHA) submitted comments to CMS on its proposed "meaningful use" rule.

The July issue of Management Science contains a study that "quantifies the effect of state privacy regulation on the diffusion of electronic medical records." The study, by Amalia Miller, Department of Economics, University of Virginia and Catherine Tucker, MIT Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that "state privacy regulation restricting hospital release of health information reduces aggregate EMR adoption by hospitals by more than 24%."  To see the abstract, click

Late on Wednesday, Feb. 11, the House and Senate reached agreement on final language for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law as soon as it reaches his desk. An unofficial  summary of the conference agreement includes the following health-related provisions --

Both the Senate and House have passed different versions of an economic stimulus bill. In addition to tax cuts and new government spending provisions, both bills include many provisions that affect healthcare providers. A conference committee will meet this week in an attempt to iron out the differences.

According to a fact sheet from the Senate Finance Committee, here are some of the key differences in the two bills, relating to healthcare.