Link: House Bill Supports Stimulus' Aims from Health Data Management.
How interesting! Today HDM reported that there is legislation pending that would provide loan guarantees to help physicians purchase EHRs.
According to this article, "the bill would guarantee up to 90% of loans of up to $350,000 for individuals and $2 million for group practices. It also would permit a loan repayment deferral period of one to three years..... Text of H.R. 3014 is available at congress.gov."
This is an interesting proposition because much has been written/discussed online regarding costs as a barrier to implementation of EHRs in physician practices.
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Although I am not fully certain that the legislation has passed through the senate, here is a link to the text of the bill where it discusses loan guarantees for Health IT that may be obtained through the Small Business Administration.
Full text of H.R. 3014 >> http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h3014rfs.txt.pdf
Provisions in the bill include:
1) Administrator may guarantee up to 90 percent of the amount of a loan made to a qualified eligible professional to be used for the acquisition of health information technology for use in such eligible professional’s medical practice and for the costs associated with the installation of such technology.
2) The maximum amount of loan principal guaranteed under this subsection may not exceed—
(A) $350,000 with respect to any single qualified eligible professional; and
(B) $2,000,000 with respect to a single group of affiliated qualified eligible professionals.
3) No service fees, processing fees, origination fees, application fees, points, brokerage fees, bonus points, or other fees may be charged to a loan applicant or recipient by a lender in the case of a loan guaranteed under this section.
Best of luck!
Posted by: Deborah Leyva | March 06, 2010 at 04:38 PM
so what is my next step to get this loan?
Posted by: Michael | March 06, 2010 at 02:49 PM