Report: Meaningful Use Payments Total $34.7 Billion

Since the beginning of the meaningful use program and through May 2016, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has allocated $34.69 billion in meaningful use incentives payments, according to CMS data.

Of the $34,698,047,312 in Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments to participating hospitals and eligible providers for successful attestations, $20.6 billion has been paid to eligible hospitals, $9 billion has been paid to Medicare eligible providers, $4.6 billion to Medicaid eligible providers and close to $500 million to Medicare Advantage organizations.

And, according to the latest numbers, to date, more than 500,000 unique providers have received EHR incentive program payments—308,693 are Medicare eligible providers, 172,826 Medicaid eligible providers, 4,924 eligible hospitals and 15,794 Medicare Advantage organizations for eligible professionals.

Providers must successfully demonstrate Meaningful Use and meet all program requirements to be included in the latest report. Breaking down the data by stage, CMS data indicates that 312,000 Medicare and Medicaid eligible professionals received $19.9 billion in EHR incentive payments during MU Stage 1, and 147,000 eligible professionals received $3.4 billion in payments in MU Stage 2.

And, according to CMS data, there are, to date, 587,000 active registrations, which indicates all eligible professionals and hospital registrations that have been fully completed. And, of those, 377,000 are Medicare eligible professionals, 205,000 are Medicaid eligible professionals and 4,800 are hospitals.