Medicare, Medicaid EHR Payments Break $10B barrier In December

Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record payments are estimated to have blasted through $10.3 billion to a total of 180,200 physicians and hospitals through December since the program’s inception.

December’s payments of $1.25 billion were driven by the largest amount of hospital payments for an individual month, according to Robert Anthony, a specialist in CMS’ Office of eHealth Standards and Services.

“We will pay out in December more than $1 billion in Medicare and Medicaid hospital payments, our single largest month of payments by a factor of almost three, and a total of $1.2 billion. It will bring our year-to- date, although it’s not our program year-to-date, to over $10.3 billion paid out in incentives as of the end of December,” he said at the Jan. 8 Health IT Policy Committee meeting...