Don't start panicking yet, but it turns out that the electronic health record (EHR) incentive money everyone's been talking about could go right out the door. That's right, the up to $44,000 in per-provider subsidies could be eliminated by the Congressional "supercommittee," a bipartisan group of 12 lawmakers formed by the Budget Control Act of 2011 -- aka the debt ceiling law - passed Aug. 2 after much political wrangling.
The supercommittee is required by the law to develop a bill that cuts $1.2 trillion in federal spending by Nov. 23, and the bill must be voted on by Dec. 23, in a simple up-or-down vote in both houses of Congress. If the supercommittee fails to create such a bill, then an across-the-board spending cut will be triggered starting in 2013, all as part of the Budget Control Act.
Whether the supercommittee comes up with a bill or not, this means your EHR incentive money could be reduced or even eliminated as a result of deficit cutting. How likely is this to happen? Possible but unlikely, according to a white paper from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMMS), a top health information advocacy group.
HIMMS observes that both President George W. Bush and President Obama touted EHRs as a way to boost patient outcomes while improving efficiency and driving down the cost of care. "Ultimately, it is hard to predict what ideas might be proposed, as it is true that all ideas are 'on the table,' but that bipartisan support for health IT will be a strong factor in the conversation," the HIMMS white paper concludes.
Between this and the scheduled Medicare physician pay cut of 30% set for Jan. 1, 2012, you can look forward to a real nailbiter of a show in Congress this fall.