Senate Stimulus Spares Health IT

Fellow blogger and frequent Government Executive writer Andrew Noyes reports on CongressDaily's Tech Daily Dose that health care information technology looks to have (mostly) dodged the knife in the Senate's economic stimulus bill. His analysis:

The Senate's compromise economic stimulus package has preserved much of the original measure's investments and incentives to spur adoption of electronic health records, although some stakeholders will still fight to restore cuts.

Before the approximately $100 billion in rollbacks offered by Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, the Appropriations Committee estimated the stimulus included $23.9 billion for health information technology. Now that number is more like $21 billion, including $18 billion for Medicare and Medicaid incentives.

The compromise, slated for a final vote today, left in $3 billion of the original $5 billion in discretionary funds for the HHS health IT coordination office. The deal caps at $1.5 million the amount a critical access hospital can receive, which the Finance Committee believes will save about $2 billion.

That shouldn't be too hard to reconcile with the House's $25 billion it slated for health IT.