First Incentive Paychecks Mailing Out to Non-Hospital EPs This Week

Per an Update e-mail from the ONCHIT (the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology), the first paychecks will be going out this week for individual eligible providers who completed their attestation for having met the meaningful use and other necessary requirements.  Per one of their Twitter messages this week:  “Incentive Programs have paid out $83,294,778.06 since January.”  Up to this point that would be mostly money that has gone out to Hospitals and possibly some Medicaid payments.

The ONCHIT’s newsletter also reiterated some of the money rules that apply to these payments, this year:

• Payment is based on 75% of Medicare allowed charges that are submitted no later than 2 months after the end of 2011 (the charges had to be this year, but you seem to have a grace period for reporting of up to 2 additional months).
• The max allowed incentive charges for this year is $24,000, which will yield a max check of $18,000 incentive payment.
• An eligible professional must meet the minimum threshold of $24000 in Medicare charges before they can be paid the incentive.  (I know they say you only have to report for 90 consecutive days this year, but it sounds like you may have to give yourself a longer than 90-day window if it will take you longer to generate the $24000 minimum Medicare charge threshold.  Bear this in mind as you decide when you want to start your attestation period this year to give yourselves enough time to generate the proper amount of charges.)
• You will receive payment to the TIN (taxpayer identification number) you selected during your registration for the incentive program.

Want to know more?  Check out the Medicare “Path to Payment” Incentive page.