- Provider for Medicare or Medicaid;
- Be a meaningful EHR user
- Physicians must qualify
- Proves to have implemented a qualified EHR software and be interoperable
Physicians with a qualified EHR, qualified EMR in place before 2011 or 2012 will be eligible for the maximum Medicare incentive payments allowed by the stimulus package. Doctors who have not adopted an EHR before 2015 and who fail to obtain a hardship exemption will see a 1% cut to Medicare pay, a reduction that phases up to 3% for 2017 and remains each year after that.
In 2011, however, the reward for e-prescribing will begin to decrease, a fee for not using e-prescribing will begin in 2012. The e-prescribing incentive payment will be 1 percent in 2011 and 2012, and 0.5 percent in 2013. The fee for not using e-prescribing will be a reduction in Medicare reimbursement by 1 percent in 2012, 1.5 percent in 2013, and 2 percent in 2014.
Depreciation and Expenses 2009
Section 179 limits. The maximum expense deduction you can elect for qualified property you placed in service in tax years that begin in 2009 remains at $250,000 ($285,000 for qualified enterprise zone property and qualified renewal community property). This limit is reduced by the amount by which the cost of property placed in service in the tax year exceeds $800,000
Under the 2008 Economic Stimulus Act (ESA), you can take further advantage of the Section 179 expense allowance to write off the entire cost of your new and used Healthcare equipment purchases in 2008.
Specifically, the expense allowance has been temporarily increased from $128,000 to $250,000 for taxpayers with total capital investments of $800,000 or less. Equipment acquired with a capital lease ($1 purchase option) and placed into service by December 31, 2008 is eligible for the increased allowance.
| Before getting EMR |
YOUR IT PERSON AND YOUR EMR SOFTWARE / EHR SOFTWARE, ARE YOU PAYING TO BREAK-FIX YOUR NETWORK COMPUTERS?
Many IT technicians love to be called to service your network computers, the reason is simple, it means money that he / she will receive. Many call it break-Fix, oftentimes we don't call it that way.
Today's technology has allowed users at your office to be more technical savvy than before, when those jobs were strictly for technical people. Most problems in computers are resolved by turning the device off, then turn it on again and the problem goes away. We are not talking here why it did happen, but what is the solution.
Most offices pay to IT people $75 thru $150 per hour just to turn off the device and then turn it back on. When the user so easily can do that, and save you that money many times. Many instances is not just about that, it requires an small change, restart the computer and problem solved.
How much are you paying a month for IT services? are you paying for hardware maintenance as well? if so, you better keep reading.
In technical terms, computer's software and configuration should not fail once a good mantenance has been done, there may be glitches, missing functionality, and many other problems that not even an IT person can resolve, and that is becasue that is a problem of the software provider, such as your Operating system, your internet browser, your commercial application software, your industry specific software, etc. There are problems though, on these programs that it is a matter of configuration for those not to fail. When you call your IT person most problems will be found in the operating system configuration.
It is very easy to break a computer without the intention to do so, and that problem will come up days later, weeks later or months later. Most IT people know that, and when it is time to fix the problem, it is time to call the IT guy. The IT person will be called and will focus on the problem being called upon, if there were other problems that will come up later, he / she will leave those problems outstanding for the next time the IT person is called. That is called Fix-Break your computer.
The Fix-Break can be seen in different forms, and we will not list all the possibilities out of respect to those that do a real professional job at your office, and make sure that they go thru all the problems so your network computers don't experience a new problem again.
Now, how long does it take for your IT person to arrive at your office? One hour?, 4 hours? 1 day?, you decide,
The fact is that once you have a problem, the problem can be solved in a matter of minutes.
With the current technology, we fix computers in Mars, yes Mars !!. We do not need to be physically there to fix them. We use better and faster technology here in Earth to do that, it is better because the environment is different that allows us to be better here on earth. We fix computers in California, New York, Iowa, Texas, all these fixes are done from one centralized place, Florida.
Customer call and we connect to them immediately, most problems are fixed in 5 minutes, and you do not pay anything. If the device needs to be turned off, and then on, we instruct the user to do that.
Hardware is getting cheaper everyday to the point where computers are seen more like appliances than "mysterious computers", computers are like your TV, your DVD, microwave, or fax machine where you are just a user, and probably don't know much about how it works internally. What do you do when the appliance breaks?
Most medical offices are paying for hardware maintenance, when in fact they should be paying for network maintenance for that particular computer. It is cheaper, and will save you a lot of money. But wait, how fast your computer will get fixed next time if something happen to it, days later?, weeks later?
When you buy a new computer, they usually come with one year on-site support, then why you are paying again if your computers already has that?. Once a computer has passed the one year on-site support, the probabilities that that hardware will fail are one in a million. If it happens, and you are paying hardware maintenance, you can buy many new computers with the money you paid in a year.
EncounterNotes has been providing Network and Monitoring Services for a while and customers are ripping off the benefits of a cheaper maintenance and superb services, that help your personnel to be more productive while shorten dramatically the down time of the computer.
Now by mixing our Network and Monitoring Services with our EMR / EHR Support, implementation services, and even medical billing services. Do you see a benefit ?
If you are interested in just our Network and Monitoring Services, no problem, just call us.
EncounterNotes provides you with the following EMR Software Products, Medical Billing Service, and technology Services
Medical Software | Practice Management Software | Medical Scheduling Software | Telephony Reminder Software - ReminderPro | Medical Billing Software | Electronic Medical Records Software | EMR Software / EHR Software | Telephony Lab System | Medical Billing Service
For more Information
Feel free to contact us so we can provide you with more insight information. Remember that we are consultants and not sales people, so the conversation will be more straight to your point not to ours. If you do not have time right now, just leave us your information and we will call you at the time you specify in the free demo request form
Just $30 a month with our EMR/EHR Software, or
125 to 249 calls - 20¢/ call
250 to 999 calls - 18¢/ call
10,000+ calls - 10¢/ call