Not-for-profit hospitals have been none too quick in rolling out cost-sharing programs for physician office EHR and e-prescribing tools. As Modern Healthcare reports this week, they are concerned about being second-guessed by the IRS, and having improper motives imputed to them, which could lead to sanctions. Given the scrutiny that tax-exempt hospitals have come under recently (see earlier post on this topic), this is probably not an excess of caution.
Explicit guidance on the issue from Congress or the IRS would be welcome, so that the health care system at large may reap the anticipated benefits of broader dissemination of EHR and e-prescribing systems.
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IRS finally green-lights hospital underwriting of physician EHR systems
The safe harbors for hospital funding of physician EHR system acquisition have gone largely unused to date. That should change — at least for the tax-exempt hospitals — now that the IRS has issued its eagerly-awaited memorandum regarding Hospitals Pr…