Are There EMR Incentives Outside of Medicare and Medicaid?
The short answer (at least for now) is not really. The ARRA EHR stimulus money is provided through Medicare and Medicaid programs as “bonuses” for those who show “meaningful use” of a “certified EHR.”
With that said, there are some grants available for special situations. For example, they have a beacon communities program which are given to organizations that will supposedly take EHR software to the next level and be examples for their communities of what can be done with IT and EMR software.
We’ve heard that there are other grants that practices can apply for also, but I’m not sure all of the details. We’ve also heared that there might be some EMR stimulus money available in the latest healthcare reform bill. For example, I read somewhere recently that the healthcare reform bill includes some stimulus money for long term care which has basically been left out of stimulus money as well.
For informational purposes only.
"My husband and I have a small practice but we were looking for a medical billing company to consult us. We originally started with a local company with some satisfaction. However, our biggest problem was that they wanted us to change our existing EMR to software that they worked with. Quest National Services worked with our existing software so that we didn’t have to make expensive changes to our infrastructure. That saved us a lot of time and headache. I would definitely say that was one of the main reasons for why we switched and why we continue to work with Quest. As a small practice, they helped us without draining our resources."
Adriana C.
