Questions outnumber answers on IT incentives at CMS town hall

Attendees at CMS “town hall meeting” at the HIMSS annual conference in Atlanta on Monday had more questions about the Obama administration's health information technology subsidy program than the speakers had answers.

That said, Jessica Kahn, technical director for health IT at the CMS' Center for Medicaid and State Operations, and Tony Trenkle, the CMS director of the Office of E-Health Standards and Services, urged the audience to submit questions and comments to the regulations.gov Web site noting that all questions must receive a publicly posted response—though those answers may be aggregated for frequently asked questions.

“We want to make sure the program succeeds—it is an evolving initiative,” Trenkle said.

“It means a lot of people at CMS will have no social life, and their families will forget who they are,” Kahn said. “We want to pay the incentives. The goal is not to sit on this pot of money.”

Earlier, Kahn had noted that, while the incentive money is meant to help pay for information technology investment, once providers meet federal requirements and receive payment they will be free to use the money as they see fit.

One woman asked if there was any way to ensure that the health system received the payments rather than the providers within the organization, and Kahn said the goal was to have "1,000 flowers blooming" and that the CMS was staying away from how organizations distribute the money they receive.

“We don't want to get into that,” she said. “We anticipate that there will be some interesting discussions.”