By Gregg Blesch

The White House announced $25 million in grants for states and health systems that carry out and evaluate evidence-based patient-safety and medical-liability demonstrations, following up on President Barack Obama’s nod to malpractice reform in his speech to Congress last week.

In a memorandum, Obama directed HHS to make the funding available for “the development, implementation and evaluation of alternatives to our current medical liability system.” Obama said in the memo that such alternatives should reduce preventable injuries; improve communication between physicians and patients; ensure fair and timely compensation for injured patients; reduce frivolous lawsuits; and reduce liability premiums.

Grants of up to $3 million and three years will go to applicants that implement and evaluate demonstrations, and one-year grants of up to $300,000 and technical assistance will go to applicants that want to plan projects, the White House said in a news release. Decisions are expected in early 2010.

The American Medical Association called the news “a welcome step” toward liability reform. “The AMA supports federal funding for state-based pilot projects on medical liability reform alternatives such as health courts, early disclosure and compensation programs and expert witness qualifications,” AMA President J. James Rohack said in a written statement

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Diana Manos, Senior Editor

As part of a federal effort to dispel myths about health reform, David Blumenthal, the nation’s coordinator for health information technology, said HIT can reduce medical errors and improve the quality of healthcare.

At a Friday Webcast hosted by the Department of Health and Human Services, Blumenthal was part of a panel of federal experts gathered to promote the Obama administration’s proposal for health reform. The panel members took questions from the public via email, Twitter and Facebook.

Blumenthal said healthcare technology sounds “abstract and forbidding,” but it contributes many valuable and fundamental elements of better care. As a primary care physician of 30 years, he said he began using healthcare IT 10 years ago and found it helped him to provide better care and lower costs by preventing duplicate tests for his patients.

Health IT can also remind doctors of important preventative tests that their patients need, helping to improve care, he said.

Blumenthal disputed a Webcast viewer’s question about whether health IT could be used to ration care, saying health IT helps the doctor and patient determine the best course of treatment by providing “everything they need to make a correct and wise decision.”

Blumenthal - who said he was initially hesitant to adopt IT - said The Obama administration has made a commitment toward health IT in the stimulus package, and “I am quite confident we are going to make this transition. This is going to happen because it’s the right thing to do.”

Also on Friday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius released a series of reports on how health reform will impact each state. This report comes as Congress takes a summer recess with Senate Finance Committee members unable to find a compromise on their version of the bill. The Finance Committee is the last remaining Congressional committee out of five that must pass legislation before a bill can move to the full House and Senate floor for a vote.

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The Department of Health and Human Services has released the outlines of the program to offer Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments for meaningful use of electronic health records systems.

The payments are authorized under the economic stimulus law. Medicare incentives to eligible hospitals will start in October 2010, HHS has clarified. Medicare incentives to physicians, as well as Medicaid incentives to physicians and hospitals, will start in January 2011.

By the end of 2009, HHS expects to:

1. coordinate with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology to develop related policies for the incentive programs, such as the definition of meaningful use;
2. develop proposed rules to allow public input to the incentive program policies;
3. plan systems and other requirements to support the incentive programs; and
4. plan a national outreach program.
5. By the end of 2010, HHS expects to:
6. conduct outreach to eligible professionals and providers and to state Medicaid agencies;
7. develop systems to support the payment of incentives;
8. develop final rules to establish policies to pay incentives; and
9. develop systems to monitor and evaluate incentive payments.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has been appropriated $145 million a year for FY 2009 through 2015, and $65 million for 2016, for administration of the incentive programs.

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