Hospitals and Providers in Minnesota Starting to Receive HIT Incentive Payments

The hard work of implementing an electronic health record (EHR) system is starting to pay off, literally, for critical access hospitals and providers in Minnesota. Medicare incentive dollars, totaling $23,191,582, have gone to Minnesota organizations, as of the end of October.

Clients of the Regional Extension Assistance Center for HIT (REACH), the federal health information technology (HIT) extension center serving Minnesota and North Dakota, are starting to successfully attest to meaningful use—documenting that their providers are able to meet the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) criteria for using their EHR to improve patient care.

Minnesota critical access hospital attests to meaningful use

Glacial Ridge Health System is the first REACH client in Minnesota to successfully attest to meaningful use. The system has a 19-bed critical access, trauma hospital in Glenwood, Minnesota, within Pope County, with clinics in Brooten and Glenwood.

"We've made meaningful use a priority within our system. Staff have worked hard, planning for and implementing a new electronic system. We're now using our EHR to focus on what really matters—improving the care we offer our patients," said Kirk Stensrud, Glacial Ridge Health System CEO.

Heidi Engle, CIO for Glacial Ridge Health System, noted that the EHR helps with care delivery in many ways, such as drug-drug and drug-allergy checking and quick access to patient care guidelines, as well as all the historical patient information.

Minnesota clinic attests

Christopher J. Wenner, MD is one of the first providers in Minnesota to attest to meaningful use for the Medicare EHR Incentive Program. As a solo family physician, Dr. Wenner operates a comprehensive family medicine clinic in Cold Spring, Minnesota, that is certified as a health care home.

For busy clinicians, negotiating the specifics of the meaningful use rules and attestation process is difficult. Dr. Wenner used the federally subsidized services of REACH, which saved him a lot of time by interpreting the meaningful use rules, helping organize his data needed for attesting, and assisting throughout the attestation process.

Dr. Wenner intends to use his EHR to continue to improve patient care. Reminders for preventive screening and immunizations, as well as registry features to aid in chronic disease management, will be used to support his practice as a medical home. The meaningful use and medical home requirements dovetail well to facilitate better patient care.

$1.2 billion in incentive payments nationwide

Nationwide, over $1.2 billion dollars have been paid out in Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments. To date, the average payment per eligible professionals under the Medicare program was $18,000 and $21,023 for the Medicaid program. A greater number of eligible professionals are pursuing Medicare incentives over Medicaid incentives—104,684 have registered under Medicare and 31,265 under Medicaid, as of the end of October.

The Medicaid incentive program is not yet available in Minnesota. By June 2012, over 35 percent of REACH priority primary care providers anticipate successfully attesting to meaningful use.

Serving more than 3,000 providers

REACH has signed up the following providers in Minnesota and North Dakota as of October 31, 2011:

• 3,414 priority primary care providers (95% of goal)
• 85 critical access/rural hospitals (70% of eligible hospitals)

The federal government will soon close the sign-up window for REACH services. Providers and hospitals can still sign up to participate and can chose to wait to start work when they are ready—even six to nine months from now.

As a partner in Key Health Alliance, Stratis Health co-leads REACH along with the National Rural Health Resource Center and The College of St. Scholastica.