A new national Medicare demonstration program is aiming to show health care professionals the on-the-ground advantages of connecting to the information age.

Medicare is looking for 12 communities across the country that can bring together a broad cross-section of community leadership, leverage resources, and recruit small and medium-sized primary care physician practices willing to provide the evidence that electronic health records (EHRs) can improve the quality of patient care. 

As many as 1,200 physician practices nationwide could be eligible for incentive payments of up to $58,000 per physician—up to $290,000 per practice—over the five-year life of the demonstration.  Incentives would be based on a practice’s level of EHR use, and for reporting and performance on 26 clinical quality measures.  Medicare plans to announce the winning communities in June 2008.

Learn more about the new EHR demonstration project and e-mail EHR_Demo@cms.hhs.gov or EHR_Demo_communityselections@cms.hhs.gov for more information about community selection.

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