Health Information Technology Essay

Technology is being used everywhere in the world. For example, technology is used to make cars, clothes, eye glasses, to teach and now it is utilized in health care every day. Technology plays a major role in the health care reform Act to reduce costs, improve access, and save lives. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act , and its constitutionality ruling by the United States Supreme Court last June 28, 2012, mandates requiring all electronic medical records for all health care agencies in 2014 ( Jha, 2013, p 1628) . David Blumenthal (2009) surveyed all acute care hospitals in the American Hospital Association and found only 1.5% of U.S. Hospitals have comprehensive electronic medical records system. Also included in the Patient

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 identified three main components of meaningful use: the use of a certified EHR in a meaningful manner, electronic exchange of health information to improve quality of care, and the use of technology to submit clinical outcomes and quality measures (Heath Resources and Service Administration, n.d.). ARRA includes many measures to modernize our nation’s infrastructure, with the “Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act” being an example. The HITECH Act is an effort led by Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services (CMS) in support of electronic health records and meaningful use (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC 2016). According to Galbraith (2013), the HITECH Act aims to promote the use of EHRs by providing over $27 billion in monetary incentives for health care providers that become “meaningful users”. CMS uses these core objectives to determine if a health care provider has satisfied meaningful use and is eligible to receive financial incentives (Galbraith, 2013).

“Go Paperless and Get Paid” is how the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) presents the incentives for electronic health records. The United States Department of Health and Human Services (U.S. Department of HHS) distributed more than $160 billion dollars to “improve and preserve health care, health information technology, community health, and prevention initiatives” (United States Department of Health and Human Services [HHS], 2014e). Likewise, the ONC offers “Health IT Adoption Programs” through the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, seeking to advance the American health care delivery system and to improve patient care through an unique investment towards health information technology (HHS, 2014d). Additionally, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 allows the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to reward eligible hospitals and professionals with monetary incentives as they implement, adopt, or upgrade and demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health record (EHR) technology (HHS, 2014b). The Electronic Health Records Improvement Act (H.R. 1331) introduced by the United States House of Representative Diane Black is a bill to further improve the nation’s health care adoption of health information technology.

The ARRA includes the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which pursues to improve American Healthcare and patient care through an extraordinary investment in Healthcare IT (HIT). The requirements of the HITECH Act are precisely designed to work jointly to provide the necessary assistance and technical operation to providers, enable grammatical relation and organization within and among states, establish connectivity in case of emergencies, and see to it the workforce is properly trained and equipped to be meaningful users of certified Electronic Health Records (EHRs). These computer software products are designed collaboratively to intensify the footing for every American to profit from an electronic health record (EHR) as part of a modernized, interrelated, and vastly improved grouping of care delivery.

In February of 2009, the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act (ARRA) was passed to help the nation modernize its infrastructure. The “Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act” was then passed to address the barriers to the adoption of the electronic health record by healthcare organizations (Sandefer, Marc, & Kleeburg, 2015). There are many barriers for healthcare organizations to adopt the electronic health record. These include: “substantial cost, the perceived lack of financial return from investing in them, the technical and logistic challenges involved in installing,

Considering the great advances in technology, EHRs prior to January 2009 were underperforming. Often the EHR simply resembled the provider’s unique approach to healthcare. The technology existed, however the healthcare industry was not ready embracing the capabilities of the EHR. EHRs require standardization and each hospital had its own version of practicing medicine. It became apparent healthcare providers were going to continue business as usual; therefore the benefits linked to the capabilities of the EHR went unrealized. Indeed it is interesting the amount of time and legal maneuvers it took to spark the use of EHRs in hospitals. It was apparent government intervention to jump-start the EHR was inevitable. On January 9, 2009 passage of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health legislation (HITECH) opened the gateway to technology and implementation of the EHR.

The health IT system is essential to transform the delivery of health care. Innovation within the IT system includes efficient data use through warehouses as they expand health information, which allows for big improvements in the technological use. These improvements would ensure that data user safety will allow the smooth exchange of information transfer electronically between different health care providers. In this case, most hospital employees and health care organizations understand how the health information technology (IT) is important for the HCO’s functions. The passing of “the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) legislation in 2009, with its specific attention to advancing EHRs, federal dollars are dedicated to expanding EHR use in physician offices and more” (Abdelhak pg. 180). This shows that a federal government has an ability to change in the healthcare industry, so the government should incorporate science and technology development. The private sector and government funding resources will also have a significant impact to play a great role in the exploration of new software operations in terms of advancing the technological environment. Advancing this area of the organization encourages health Information

With HITECH, the Obama administration has given $34 billion dollars to fund the implementation of EHRs through an incentive based program. To qualify for this program, organizations must buy a government certified HER system and demonstrate “meaningful use” of the certified EHR technology. HITECH has created an essential foundation for restructuring health care delivery and for achieving the key goals of improving health care quality; reducing costs; and increasing access through better methods of storing, analyzing, and sharing health information. The HITECH Act supports the 5 pillars of health outcomes policy priorities as described under “meaningful use”. The act is also measured by a set of objectives: breadth of use (spread of HER use among medical staff); extent of use; and quality improvement (Meaningful use of EHRs, 2013). Originally the achievement of these objectives through meaningful use were set to be met by this year (2015), but an extension has been made until

In 2009, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) along with the support of Congress proposed that the use of Health Information Technology (HIT) has tremendous potential in improving healthcare and transform how the health care is delivered. So, under Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 (HITECH), as a part of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), Federal government has established a combination of voluntary financial incentives and eventual penalties by including up to 34 billion dollars as financial incentives for Medicare and Medicaid providers to encourage the adoption and meaningful use of certified Electronic Health Records (EHRs). The term Meaningful

Medical care is making a switch to Electronic Health Records. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology provided incentives to hospitals and other medical institutions to use electronic health records for "Meaningful Use" (Saba

Healthcare Information Technology has drastically changed in the past 10 years. With billions of dollars being spent to insure improvement in the healthcare industry. In 2009 President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The President did this with hope to improve the delivery of healthcare in the United States by giving incentives for the implementation of Electronic Health Record and meaningful use of them. To become eligible for meaningful use is somewhat different for hospitals than it is professionals.

With the enforcement of both the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), our health care systems have undergone drastic and continuous change in health care policy, regulations, and reforms. This has significantly changed the way our health care organizations have provided medical services to patients, and at the same time meet new health care law requirements. The issue, however, in meeting these reforms lies in ensuring patients receive quality care at an affordable price, and that health care organizations meet these goals through technological improvements with Healthcare Information Technology (HIT). In doing so, health care organizations can not only meet the new health care law requirements, but, at the same time, save financial resources to improve quality standards of care for patients in the present and in the future.

To encourage the adoption and implementation of the electronic health records (EHRs)by healthcare provider’s investment was made in the year 2009 by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. For the widespread use of EHRs incentive payments were authorized through Medicare and Medicaid to clinicians and hospitals when they privately and securely use EHRs for achieving improvements in care delivery by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH).The healthcare organizations are expected to demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs. This rule of meaningful use has been implemented to strike a balance between acknowledging the urgency of adopting EHRs for improving the healthcare system and identifying the challenges that would be put forth by this. The federal government would provide resources to support the adoption and implementation of EHRs. It would make $27billion available as incentive payments over a period of 10 years, and as much as $63,750(through Medicaid incentives) and $44,000(through Medicare incentives).

In 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) provision was enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). It was created to help strengthen and reinforce the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) which protects a patients’ health information, as well as uncover fraud in the health care system. With the creation of HITEC Act, there was a push created for the implement of Electronic Health Records (EHR) among providers. With the HITECH Act comes stronger penalties for neglect, fraud and abuse. Breach notifications are required as well as allowing patients and some third parties to be allowed to access their own personal health information (PHI).

According to Hart (as cited in Thede, 2012) Informatics is “a combination of computer science, information science, and nursing science designed to assist in the management and processing of nursing data, information, and knowledge to support the practice of nursing and the delivery of nursing care” (Thede, 2012). There have been many different contributions to healthcare since the evolvement of healthcare informatics. Many of the different contributions as allowed health care providers to provide the optimal care to their patients. There were two AHRQ- funded studies that showed tools provide from the computer generated reports increased preventive care measures (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2002). The study goes on to state that physicians who received reminders ordered more preventive care measures, had an increase in vaccination rates, increased there compliance for colon cancer screening by 50 to 133 %, and overall increased their compliance rate from 10 to 15% overall (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2002). Some downfalls to not using electronic medical records is hand writing that is illegible, unorganized and higher chance of losing records or misplacing records, and duplicate records that are not easily shared among providers (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2002).