EHR Stimulus (ARRA) Presentation in Austin, Texas

July 16, 2009
John Lynn
1 Min Read

I just got done with a presentation in Austin, TX on EHR stimulus money available through ARRA. Overall it seems like the comments on the presentation were good and those in attendance seemed to appreciate hearing some candid thoughts about the EHR stimulus money and how they could obtain that money. I think I’ll share some of the other things I learned from the experience and thoughts I had while talking to people for future posts.

As I promised those in attendance, here are the slides I used for my presentation:

I want to thank GCS Technologies for inviting me to come and do this presentation. From everything I saw and experienced they seem to be a first class organization that does IT support the right way.

If any of you have an organization or company that’s interested in having me present on the topic or EHR stimulus money from ARRA, feel free to drop me a note on my “Contact Us” page.

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John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

16 Comments

  • John,

    Very nice presentation, one of the best I have seen. I would love to hear the audio as I have a presentation similar but as an EMR vendor, I try not to go into the negative aspects of CCHIT. We simply explain that we choose not to attempt CCHIT certification due to the cost and weight it would add to our offering.

    I can only assume your presentation was well received and hope you had a great trip.

    Brian

  • Hi Brian,
    Thanks for the kind words. I tried to give them a good overview of what was important. I was a little reticent to post the slides since there was so much content that wasn’t in the slides since I don’t believe in just reading slides for a presentation.

    Unfortunately, I don’t believe the audio was recorded. Maybe I’ll have to try and record the presentation if someone else invites me to present it somewhere.

    From what I can tell it seemed like it was well received. Maybe someone from the presentation will come and comment.

  • Hi John!

    Great Presentation! I couldn’t however, see the slide titled “Lies EHR Vendors Use”. I would love to this slide and was wondering why it was blank…

  • Lourdes,
    Yes, that’s part of the reason why I was a little bit uneasy about posting the slides on here. Hard to have context for the slides. That slide is actually meant to be blank. It just is a setup for the next slide. I added a nice transition to go from “Lies EHR Vendors Use” to transition to the more politically correct “EHR Sales Lines.”

    Basically, those slides are based on these 2 posts:
    https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2009/05/26/my-least-favorite-emr-vendor-sales-line/
    https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2009/06/04/more-ehr-company-lines/

  • I strongly recommend every physician or pratice administrator see John’s presentation. The 90 attendees were very interested and had numerous questions. All the feedback from the seminar has been overwhelming positive.

  • Joe,
    Thanks for the kind words. I really enjoyed meeting you and the wonderful group of people you put together. I think we definitely hit a topic that was of extreme interest to those doctors, practice managers, etc in attendance.

    I’d love to come back as you suggested for a follow up presentation in February once the final definitions of “meaningful use” and “certified EHR” are defined.

  • Like many other physicians offices I can’t find answers to a lot of questions regarding the stimulus package. Do you know where to go for these answers: such as if a large amount of your patients are dual Medicare and Medicaid, can you apply for the Medicaid stimulus even though many patients are Medicare primary? Also, how are we going to receive this money? There are so many vendors just trying to sell you a product and not really answering our questions.

  • Kelly,
    It’s a hard question to answer where to go. Although, I’m always happy to help answer questions as you have them. My contact us form is: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/contact-us/ You might also look to your local REC and there are some great EMR vendor and consultants that have good information as well.

    Here’s the quick answers to your questions:
    The key for Medicaid vs. Medicare is that if you can go fore Medicaid you should. The real question is whether you have 30% of your patients that are on Medicaid (20% for pediatrics). If you don’t have enough Medicaid population to hit that percentage, then you’ll need to go for the Medicare.

    Medicaid payments just come as a check. Although, they have to be for expenses that you used for the EMR. That shouldn’t be a problem since you can count computers and other devices.

    Medicare will come as a bonus in your reimbursement. Although, for that you have to first show 90 days of “meaningful use.” Then, you self attest to the fact that you’ve been a meaningful user of your EHR for 90 days. So, the first Medicare checks will start coming soon.

    I hope this helps. Feel free to ask more questions or clarifications. If I don’t know the answer I’ll ask around and figure it out.

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