Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record incentive  payments are estimated to have reached $9.245 billion to 177,100 physicians and hospitals through November since the program’s inception and are anticipated to reach $10 billion by the end of the year.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will post final figures later this month as it captures more data.

During November, CMS estimated that paid 8,250 Medicare eligible physicians $150 million and 4,000 Medicaid physicians $73 million and hospitals under either of the programs $645 million, for a total of $868 million, according to Robert Anthony, a specialist in CMS’ Office of eHealth Standards and Services.

[See also: More voices raised against EHR incentives.]

“We saw a large number of hospitals come in November -- 525 hospitals were paid by either Medicare or Medicaid,” he said at the Dec. 5 meeting of the advisory Health IT Policy Committee.

Many providers, especially hospitals, will attest and get paid in the final months of this year and early months of next year so they can be counted for 2012.

“The incentive payments were almost $1 billion more in November. We are on track for the end of December to hit the $10 billion mark for EHR incentives,” he noted.

In October, the totals were $8.4 billion paid since the program’s start to 164,593 Medicare and Medicaid providers.

Each month, the percent of provider involvement in meaningful use steadily rises. As of October, 26 percent, or 1 out of every 4 Medicare eligible providers, are meaningful users of EHRs, Anthony said. Additionally, 1 out of every 3 Medicare and Medicaid eligible providers has made a financial commitment to an EHR, he said. And over 65 percent of eligible hospitals have received an EHR incentive payment.

[See also: Government EHR incentives near $7B.]

In data supplied by the regional health IT extension centers, they found as they assist physician practices to adopt and use EHRs that they struggle most notably with the clinical summary, medication reconciliation, the security review, patient reminders and the summary care record.

“We see that this information jives very closely with what we’re seeing in attestation as well,” Anthony said  

Practices also find challenges as they try to become meaningful users of EHRs including, by rank, provider engagement, 25 percent; administrative issues, 22 percent; vendor selection, 16 percent; workflow adoption, 14 percent; and financial, 10 percent. On vendor issues, the biggest area is the delay in implementation or installation of EHRs.

“Meaningful use measures are not the lead challenge for most providers, except for very small providers,” he said.

Neil Calman, MD, policy committee member and president and CEO of the Institute for Family Health, was gratified that meaningful use measures did not lead the challenges for physicians.