Maryland Passes EHR Adoption Incentive Law

Ocean City, Maryland
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The first state to do so, Maryland has passed a law requiring health insurers to to provide incentives to healthcare providers for their adoption of EHR systems.

As yet undecided, the incentives may take the form of increased reimbursements, lump-sum payments, in-kind services, or some combination of these.

You can view the entire text of Maryland’s HB 706 here.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 2:09 PM and is filed under Healthcare IT. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Maryland Passes EHR Adoption Incentive Law”

  1. Andrew says:
    May 29, 2009 at 9:43 AM

    My thought exactly. At first I thought I was just being cynical, but the more I think about this, it really is just a tax on health insurers that will be passed on to individuals and their employers. In fact, I venture to say the cost of these insurer-paid incentives will be passed on dollar-for-dollar, and then some. Yet another reason to increase rates, co-pays and deductibles, and reduce coverage overall.

    This is not a solution. It’s like trying to put out a fire by throwing gasoline on it.

  2. Sarah says:
    May 29, 2009 at 7:51 AM

    On the surface, this type of law looks appealing–additional incentive for healthcare providers to adopt EHR.

    However, because health insurers will merely pass these costs on to employer sponsors and insureds, its really just a tax on health insurance. And the incidence of this tax will be on those who increasingly cannot afford health insurance: employers and employees.

    I’m happy to see Maryland taking a pro-active approach, but the major goal of healthcare reform is to REDUCE costs, not to increase them.

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