What’s in the Stimulus Bill for Doctors and Patients?

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as “the stimulus bill”) received a lot of press attention before it was signed into law on February 17, 2009. But many of the provisions that will have the biggest impact on resident physicians and their patients received scant mention.

Here are the highlights of the bill with regard to new health care spending:

• $75 million additional funding for the National Health Service Corps
• $425 million to address the health care worker shortage, particularly in primary care
• $500 million to expand community health centers
• $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research to provide reliable information on the clinical effectiveness of treatments and procedures free from the influence of the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. The research programs will be conducted by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services and others.
• $2 billion for funding for prevention and wellness programs, including immunization programs, reducing the incidents of health care-related infections, and the Department of Health and Human Services Wellness and Prevention Fund.
• $7.4 billion for additional medical research through the National Institutes of Health.
• $19 billion for the adoption, installation and training of Health IT systems by private practitioners and hospitals.
• $87 billion for additional federal funding for Medicaid, allowing state budgets to pay less for Medicare and balance their budgets without having to institute cuts.

The White House has launched a new Web site, http://www.recovery.gov, to track how this money is being spent and invite comments, questions and complaints.

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