The percentage of respondents this year who sense the penalties will have no impact went up slightly (7 percentage points) compared with last year, while those who felt they will have a negative impact or a positive impact went down slightly, by 2 and 5 percentage points, respectively.
In 2006, the federal government granted waivers from Stark and anti-kickback laws to hospitals that subsidize the extension of health IT to affiliated physicians. Among those surveyed this year, 43% were from organizations that offered IT benefits to affiliated physicians under those waivers. But 57% were not. Adding EHR incentive money to hospitals' IT arsenals has had little influence on the waiver program, respondents indicated.
Asked if the availability of IT incentive dollars had influenced their organizations to go forward with a waiver program, 62% indicated “no,” while 38% said “yes.”
Last year, the government established a network of 62 health IT regional extension centers, or RECs, to promote IT adoption; we asked survey respondents whether they expect their organizations to directly benefit from the REC program.
Among physician group leaders, the numbers were 10% “yes,” 10% “no” and 80% unsure. At hospitals, the numbers were 44% “yes,” 18% “no” and 38% unsure.