Chief information officers at some of the most wired hospitals in the country say they will be hard-pressed to qualify for federal healthcare IT incentives by next year.
Marc Probst, CIO for Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, a hospital known for its advanced use of healthcare IT to improve quality of care, said he would like to see more flexibility in the qualification requirements for meaningful use.
Probst and others commented at the American Hospital Association's annual conference held April 25-28 in the nation’s capital.
Since the proposed rule came out, Intermountain has had to add 19 to 20 new items to its IT strategy for this year. "It's a bit disconcerting," Probst said. Intermountain plans to spend $13 to 15 million to achieve meaningful use for stage 1 by 2012, he added.
Pam McNutt, senior vice-president and CIO of Methodist Health System in Dallas, said her organization began a complete healthcare IT overhaul in 2003 and has some advanced functionality.
Under ARRA – the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Methodist expects it would be eligible for $450,000 for its Medicare physicians in its teaching clinics; $10.4 million for its four acute care hospitals, and a similar amount for Medicaid, McNutt said.
Methodist hopes to be ready by 2011, she said, but "only if there is some relief to the all-or-nothing approach.” Without flexibility, Methodist won't be ready until 2013.
"I think we will only get two to three years of stimulus funding," McNutt said. "Stage 2 and Stage 3 are a little out of reach for us."
The AHA has made lobbying for changes to the meaningful use rule one of its top priorities this year. According to Rick Pollack, AHA executive vice president, the rule is "asking for too much, too soon."
David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology – who is prohibited from giving specifics about the rule before it is released – assured hospitals: "We've heard this point of view loud and clear."
The government is expected to issue the final rule this month. The proposed rule, published last December, would require hospitals to comply with 23 measures to qualify for incentives.
