MU incentive payments top $12B

More than $12 billion in EHR incentive payments have been paid to 219,000 physicians and hospitals through February, according to reports issued by the Centers for Health & Human Services' (CMS) Office of eHealth Standards and Services at the Health IT Policy Committee. CMS will post final figures later this month for more complete data, so the current total could be more than $12.3 billion.

Some healthcare providers are now into their second year of Meaningful Use reporting. “February was a big month, as we expected," said Robert Anthony, a specialist in the Office of eHealth Standards and Services. "A lot of Medicare eligible professionals came in and attested in the final month to be counted in the 2012 program. We expect that February number will continue to grow as we process them through the month. We’re already seeing some providers come in for 2013.”

The incentive program has been operating long enough now that some providers are second-time participants, so CMS lists only unique providers paid. Since the program’s inception through February, CMS has paid 140,000 Medicare physicians, 75,500 Medicaid clinicians and 3,757 hospitals, according to the latest estimates. The number of eligible providers registered for the EHR incentive program was just under 85 percent of hospitals and 73.2 percent of hospitals have been paid as of January.

“For eligible professions, two-thirds are registered and almost 40 percent have been paid under Medicare, Medicaid or Medicare Advantage,” Anthony said.  

CMS also found that the performance level was comparable between providers attesting for the first time in 2011 or 2012 on their core and menu objective measures. “We’re seeing consistently high performance. If anything, we see a slight increase as we move to a full year, but most is not statistically significant,” Anthony said. However, there were indications that as providers move into a second year of Meaningful Use, “the workflow becomes more routine, and they are performing at a slightly higher level than when they began,” he said.