More States Begin Efforts to Implement Medicaid HIT Incentive Payments - January 26, 2010

On January 21, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that four new states will receive federal matching funds for administrative costs to implement the Medicaid electronic health record (EHR) incentive payment program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The new states: Alaska, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Wisconsin, join California, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, New York, Montana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and the Virgin Islands, which have all obtained approval and a 90% federal match for proposed state planning activities. As laid out in more detail in the recent proposed rule, states must complete a series of planning activities before they can begin making incentive payments—which could be available as early as the last quarter of fiscal year 2010 in fast-acting states. For more information, please contact Xiaoyi Huang at (202) 585-0127.