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By Mel Duvall
With billions of dollars of federal stimulus spending on the table, GE launched a program Monday aimed at helping it lure a bigger slice of the market to implement electronic medical records.
GE launched a new program called Stimulus Simplicity, which it says offers doctors and hospitals an easier path to electronic medical records (EMR) adoption. In essence, the program offers physician offices and hospitals with access to interest-free funding with deferred payments, to purchase GE EMR products.
“Electronic medical records are designed to assist providers in improving patient outcomes, and reducing medical errors and costs,” says Vishal Wanchoo, president and CEO of GE Healthcare IT. “However, significant financial barriers are making healthcare providers hesitant to adopt the technology.” In particular, Wanchoo says smaller healthcare providers are finding it difficult to balance the upfront capital required and the uncertainty of what criteria the federal government will require to earn incentive payments.
In February the Obama administration approved an economic stimulus package that included about $19 billion for healthcare initiatives. Chief among those initiatives are proposals to implement EMR systems which it is believed will significantly cut healthcare costs and improve patient care.
GE is among the companies expected to benefit the most from the initiative and earlier this year announced it would invest $3 billion over the next six years on various healthcare technologies. (See CIOZone article on the companies most likely to benefit from healthcare stimulus spending and their likely takeover targets.)
In Monday’s announcement GE noted that under the federal stimulus package, funds won't become available for EMRs until 2011. In order to help healthcare providers get programs underway now, GE came up with Stimulus Simplicity concept. It plans to make as much as $100 million available in loans.
The company also announced one of the first participants in the program. The Hazard Clinic, a healthcare provider in the Appalachian region of Eastern Kentucky, will use the program to purchase GE’s Centricity EMR product.
“The case for EMR is clear and convincing,” Hazard Clinic administrator Stephanie Wooton said in a statement. “Yet, as a community-based organization, we likely wouldn’t have been able to transform our recordkeeping without this offer.”
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