Massachusetts General Laws ch. 10 sec. 35RR – Health Information Technology Trust Fund
Section 35RR. There shall be established and set up on the books of the commonwealth a separate fund to be known as the Health Information Technology Trust Fund. There shall be credited to the fund revenues from federal reimbursements under Title XIX or Title XXI of the Social Security Act and applicable waivers thereof, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, Title XIII of Division A and Title IV of Division B of Pub. L. No. 111–5 and any other federal reimbursements, grants, premiums, gifts or other contributions from any source received for or in support of the commonwealth’s Health Insurance Exchange/Integrated Eligibility System, the health care provider incentive payment program and for the promotion of electronic health record adoption and health information exchange in the commonwealth. The secretary of health and human services shall be the fund’s trustee and shall expend the fund, without further appropriation, for costs associated with the development, maintenance and administration of the Health Insurance Exchange/Integrated Eligibility System, incentive payments to eligible MassHealth health care providers for the adoption, implementation, upgrade or meaningful use of certified electronic health record technology and to support the planning, implementation and operating costs of administering these payments. The secretary may certify for payment amounts in anticipation of federal revenues collected for the corresponding quarter during the previous fiscal year. To accommodate timing discrepancies between the receipt of revenues and related expenditures, the secretary may incur expenses, after written approval from the secretary of administration and finance, and the comptroller shall certify for payment, amounts not to exceed the most recent revenue estimate as certified by the MassHealth director, as reported in the state accounting system.
Terms Used In Massachusetts General Laws ch. 10 sec. 35RR
- Appropriation: The provision of funds, through an annual appropriations act or a permanent law, for federal agencies to make payments out of the Treasury for specified purposes. The formal federal spending process consists of two sequential steps: authorization
- Fiscal year: The fiscal year is the accounting period for the government. For the federal government, this begins on October 1 and ends on September 30. The fiscal year is designated by the calendar year in which it ends; for example, fiscal year 2006 begins on October 1, 2005 and ends on September 30, 2006.
- Joint committee: Committees including membership from both houses of teh legislature. Joint committees are usually established with narrow jurisdictions and normally lack authority to report legislation.
- Trustee: A person or institution holding and administering property in trust.
Annually and not later than March 1, the secretary shall file a report with the clerks of the house of representatives and the senate, the joint committee on health care financing and the house and senate committees on ways and means that provides an accounting of the money received by the fund, broken down by source, and the expenditures made from the fund, broken down by payer and amount paid.