Blumenthal As National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
David Blumenthal, M.D. has been named by The Department of Health and Human Services as the national coordinator for health information technology, succeeding Robert Kolodner, M.D. Blumenthal currently serves as the director of the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He is a practicing physician, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and was a health policy advisor to Barack Obama during the presidential campaign.
Obama signs ARRA Today
President Barack Obama, today, signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, H.R. 1. The legislation provides $19.2 billion for health IT to help stimulate the economy, increase investment in health IT, build a strong IT infrastructure for healthcare, and expand job growth.
As reported by HIMSS, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is intended to achieve widespread adoption of health IT and enable electronic exchange of health information. The Act offers incentives through Medicare and Medicaid to reward providers for demonstrating the “meaningful use” of certified EHR technologies. The Medicare incentives for eligible professionals become available beginning 2011 and for eligible hospitals FY11 and are available only to those providers that demonstrate use of certified EHR technology as defined by the Act. Beginning in 2015 (eligible professionals) and FY15 (eligible hospitals) the incentives end, and eligible professionals and hospitals who are not “meaningful users” of EHR technologies will begin to see a reduction in their applicable Medicare percentage increase.