Financial Penalty Used as Incentive for EMR Adoption

As more doctors convert to electronic medical record systems, there is hope to see advances in health care delivery and operations.

The federal government is helping to drive these changes with subsidies that partially cover the expenses of converting to electronic medical health records from paper systems.

Since financial incentives have proven not to be enough to motivate doctors, there will be financial penalties put in place to encourage doctors to implement an electronic system by 2015.

According to an article published on New Jersey Spotlight, the federal government has already given doctors in the state of New Jersey $38 million in subsidies for EMR conversion. Almost 27 percent of the state's doctors have already converted according to Colleen Woods, New Jersey Health Information Technology coordinator. Woods estimates that that number will exceed 80 percent when Medicare imposes financial penalties.

This article explains that what is happening in New Jersey is that many practices are small, with only one or two doctors, and it doesn’t make sense financially to implement an electronic system.

It’s imaginable that many other small doctor’s offices in other states across the county feel the same way.

Starting in 2015, 1 percent of Medicare reimbursement will be withheld by the government for doctors offices that do no have EMR software and systems in place. Small practices will now have to revaluate the financial pros and cons, and when doing so will mostly likely be compelled to join the other digital doctors.