On Tuesday, May 19
th, the Maryland state legislature took a big step forward in encouraging the adoption of health IT among the state’s providers. Following passage by the state Senate and House, Governor Martin O’Malley signed into law House Bill 706 (HB706). HB706, the first bill of its kind in the country, seeks to align state regulation of health IT with the federal health IT incentives outlined in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). This task is somewhat simplified due to Maryland’s all-payer reimbursement system.
ARRA, the federal stimulus bill, provides Medicare and Medicaid incentives to providers for meaningful use of an electronic health record (EHR) before 2015. The Act also outlines penalties for those not using EHRs thereafter. HB706 takes these incentives and penalties one step further, requiring all private, state-regulated insurers to build EHR incentives and penalties into their payment structures. HB706 also requires the Maryland Health Care Commission and the Health Services Cost Review Commission to designate an official statewide health information exchange (HIE). An officially recognized HIE is an important step towards securing federal stimulus funding, as grants are available for states’ HIE efforts, and one prerequisite for Medicare and Medicaid incentives is the ability of providers to share information electronically.
For the past year, two groups in Maryland—Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (
CRISP) and The Montgomery County Health Information Exchange Collaborative—have been making progress on the establishment of a statewide HIE. In March, AI team members worked with other CRISP participants to deliver a
report to the Maryland Health Care Commission detailing a plan for HIE in the state. The Maryland Health Care Commission is currently bidding out the resulting implementation project and is expected to choose the winning respondent group sometime before August.