Mental Care IT? Congress Shrinks.

A bill making mental-health providers eligible for federal health IT "meaningful use" incentives likely will have rough going in Congress, according to a report published today by the Center for Public Integrity.

Mental health providers -- including clinical psychologists and social workers, psychiatric hospitals and substance-abuse treatment centers -- were excluded from the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, in part to reduce costs from the $50 billion originally proposed. The act, part of the stimulus bill, commits $27 billion in Medicaid and Medicare incentives to hospitals and most types of medical practices for implementing electronic health records. In addition to behavioral-health providers, HITECH funding also excludes long-term care providers, rehabilitation centers and cancer centers, among others.

The Behavioral Health Information Technology Act, introduced earlier this month by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., has been referred to the Senate Committee on Finance, according to the article. The question is whether the Republican-controlled Congress will be willing to appropriate the money. A similar bill introduced last year never made it out of committee. Nor did the House version, authored by then-Rep. Patrick Kennedy, also a Rhode Island Democrat.

Health IT is popular with Congress, but stimulus funding is not, Brian Darling, director of government studies at the Heritage Foundation, says in the article.

A behavioral-health industry lobbyist tells the center that if the bill fails to pass this time, lawmakers could fold it into another Medicare measure at the end of the year.