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Report: Payers should give docs money to get on board with IT

EHR Connection, November 29, 2004

Payers should provide incentives of about $12,000-$24,000 per full time physician per year to encourage IT implementation, according to a new study from the public-private IT adoption collaborative Connecting for Health. According to the report, the financial incentives need to cover most of the adoption expenses, especially for small- to medium-sized practices. On a per-patient basis, the report estimates the need for payers to provide incentives of $3-$6 per patient visit or 50 cents to $1 per patient each month.

The report calls into question the effectiveness of traditional adoption incentives, such as providing doctors with the hardware to implement IT. For example, when the health plan Wellpoint provided physicians with $42 million worth of free PDAs or PCs to encourage e-Rx adoption this year, only 19,000 of its 25,000 doctors participated, and one in four passed on the offer, reports TechwebNews.com.

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