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On January 28, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved its portion of the economic stimulus
package with a few modifications to the health information technology section of the package. Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl,
who is also chair of the Senate Aging Committee, amended the legislation to include loans to hospitals that had adopted
health IT initiatives before federal funds were available, in order to update those systems to meet the more stringent
privacy and security requirements under the new legislation. Kohl also amended the legislature to broaden the scope of
privacy and security requirements beyond health care providers, to include direct oversight of vendors that house
individually identifiable health information, such as Google and Microsoft (both of which have personal record keeping
applications).
Sen. Kohl introduced changes to expand the definition of "health care provider" to include nursing and
other long-term care facilities. Kohl believed the original text requiring healthcare providers to receive
certification to get funding snubbed long-term facilities because certification standards will not be
developed until July 2010 by the commission that verifies e-health records and their networks. Finally,
Sen. Kohl amended the legislation to include nursing facilities that did not meet the definition of a
"skilled nursing facility" to participate in the stimulus benefits.
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