Not-for-profit hospitals and health systems have become more comfortable subsidizing electronic health records


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Not-for-profit hospitals and health systems have become more comfortable subsidizing electronic health records for their affiliated physician practices since the Internal Revenue Service alleviated concerns about hospitals' tax exemption status, Modern Healthcare reports.
 
Hospitals were concerned that efforts to subsidize EHRs for physicians would violate Stark and anti-kickback laws, but CMS and the HHS Office of the Inspector General created a safety zone in the interest of expediting EHR adoption among physicians who found the costs prohibitive.
 
According to a May 2007 IRS memo, hospitals can access the EHRs of affiliated physicians that were created with the technology and services the hospital helped pay for, to the extent permitted by HIPAA and state privacy laws. Not-for-profit hospitals also are required to make the technology and associated services available to all physicians with staff privileges at the facility, and the subsidy must be the same for everyone or vary by criteria that meet the needs of the community.
 
A spokesperson said the IRS considers the matter resolved and has not received any requests for private-letter rulings on donation programs, although the exempt-organizations technical branch is now considering several applications regarding the treatment of subsidies for regional health information organizations.
 
Hospitals have really started to subsidize EHR software purchases to their affiliated physicians.  Watch for CIS companies to begin providing their current hospital clients an offering for those physicians.