ARRA and Health IT: What's in it for me?
As the Senate and House begin final negotiations today on the conference report for the nearly $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), stakeholders are left asking, what’s in it for me? If the question comes from those interested in obtaining funding to support health information technology, the answer is... a lot.
Health IT stands at the forefront of the health reform debate. It was an issue of frequent mention on the campaign trail, with Presdient Obama pledging to invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. towards broad adoption of a robust health IT infrastructure. The funding for health IT included in the ARRA is viewed by many as the first down-payment on the President's promise.
Highlights of the health IT language in the House and Senate recovery packages include:
- Over $20 billion in Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments to hospitals and physicians
- Between $2-3 billion in funding to support infrastructure development (activites carried out by ONCHIT, grants and loans to states)
- Significant changes to regulation of the privacy and security of electronically maintained or transmitted health information
From an implementation perspective, the legislation grants broad discretion to the yet to be named Secretary of Health and Human Services. This makes the forthcoming appointment even more critical to those involved in the health reform debate with a keen interest in health IT.
Despite the challenges that lay ahead, health IT proponents are already hailing the recovery package as a success, citing the CBO estimate that incentive payments would boost health IT adoption rates to about 70 percent for hospitals and about 90 percent for physicians. But the unknown, and perhaps more important, measure of success-- whether the significant investment actually translates into real savings systemwide-- remains to be seen.
