The truth of this “free $44k from the government” is that it is only paid as medicare disbursement bonuses over several years limited to only the next few years. Meanwhile, the face value of medicare disbursements themselves continue to stagnate, decline, include new liabilities like HITECH penalties, or simply refused to be honored at all.

There is no “free money from the government” for health information technology. The superior application technology itself should merit its use without incentives, but this “free money” myth is pernicious and easily dispelled with a ten minute revue of the law itself which you can read on any link returned by Google as included above. Also see the following link:

http://www.thinkgene.com/practice-fusion-do-the-math-44000-is-a-lie/