House Leaders Introduce Bill to Correct HHS Rule on EHR Payments to Multi-Campus Hospitals - August 2, 2010

On July 30, House lawmakers introduced a bill to modify recent U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rules that would otherwise limit electronic health record (EHR) incentive payments to only one hospital in multi-campus hospital systems. H.R. 6072, the “Electronic Health Record Incentives for Multi-Campus Hospitals Act of 2010,” would ensure that multi-campus hospitals can receive larger incentives, recognizing that such hospitals will incur incrementally greater costs to deploy EHR systems. Under the bill, hospitals will be given the option of either receiving base payments for each campus and using one combined per-discharge amount, or having only one base payment and using the average number of discharges per campus for per discharge amount purposes. The lead sponsor is Zachary Space (D-OH) and original cosponsors included the chairs of both the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce committees, Reps. Sander Levin (D-MI) and Henry Waxman (D-CA), the chairs of the respective Health subcommittees for each committee, Pete Stark (D-CA) and Frank Pallone (D-NJ), and Energy and Commerce Committee members John Dingell (D-MI), Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Michael Burgess (R-TX). The bill was referred to the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce committees.