Delta Connect Blog

As a requirement of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) Office of Disability, Aging and Long-Term Care Policy recently released a study entitled EHR Payment Incentives for Providers Ineligible for Payment Incentives and Other Funding Study.  The long-awaited study provided a rationale for identifying provider types not eligible for electronic health record (EHR) incentive payments and identified the provider types who may participate in Medicare and Medicaid but are not eligible for the EHR incentive programs instituted under HITECH.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced through the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology (HIT) its initiative for accelerating health information exchange (HIE) across a wide spectrum of providers in acute and long-term post-acute care (LTPAC) settings. Home health was included as one of these providers.

The idea that providers own patient data is still prevalent in healthcare today because payment models encourage it, and that’s one of the big barriers still standing in the way of widespread interoperability, according to H. Stephen Lieber.