CMS Officials Say that $400 Million in Incentive Payments has been issued so far

The CMS has offered up some details about healthcare providers that have attested that they meet the first stage of meaningful use, offering insight into the experience of early adopters of certified EHRs.

Robert Tagalicod, the director of the Office of eHealth Standards and Services at the CMS, told members of the federally chartered health IT advisory meeting that 77,000 providers have registered for the EHR incentive payments and that twenty-one states have their Medicaid EHR incentive payment programs open to receive provider registrations, and more than 3,500 providers have received their first payments under the various operational Medicaid programs.

Those are significant numbers of registered users but to date the CMS has paid Medicaid incentives to only 3,500 physicians and hospital for adoption, implementation and upgrades of certified EHR technology.   Under the Medicare program an additional 1,000 physicians and hospitals have been issued checks. In total, CMS has issued almost $400 million in incentive payments, Tagalicod said.

So if my math is correct, that’s approximately 4,500 payments issued to over 80,000 registered providers.

One possible reason for the small number of payments is that in order to qualify for payments in 2011  providers must not only attest that they can demonstrate meaningful use but meet the threshold of $24,000 for allowed charges in claims for covered services to Medicare beneficiaries during 2011.  It’s still early in the year so those more practices should be meeting those thresholds going forward on a monthly basis.