IRS rules on EHR funding expected within a few months

Today’s iHealthBeat picked up the Modern Healthcare report that IRS rules giving tax-exempt hospitals comfort on how to provide EHRs to their physicians while staying within the Stark and AKS rules will be coming out relatively soon. 

It’s worth noting that this announcement was not made by the IRS but, rather, by an HHS official.  As Martin Jensen observed on The HIT Transition Blog,

Kind of interesting that the same Department that can’t tell us when their own policies will be released — or even hint at what those policies might say — feels so confident speaking for another twig on the executive branch.

Update 4/24/07:  Still waiting for some comfort . . . nearly 2/3 of hospital CIOs surveyed said they’re not ready to take the plunge without definitive guidance from the federales.

— David Harlow