Healthcare Legislation
Healthcare Information Systems Legislation Since 2000
Health information technology has become a topic of discussion for healthcare organizations, professionals, and lawmakers in recent years as the government consigns tax dollars and presents legislation that will make new healthcare information systems more affordable and available over the coming years. Healthcare information systems innovators are also trying to design systems that are more user friendly and comply with the needs of multiple organizations. In 2004, President Bush signed an executive order which set a ten-year window on developing and implementing electronic health records systems across the United States (EHealthWV, 2004). Healthcare information technology had already been addressed in the HIPAA standards, some of which became law in 2001 and 2003 (Maruca, 2010). State legislatures began a concerted effort to address the issue of electronic healthcare systems in 2007, a year in which "74 bills were passed in 39 states and the District of Columbia" (HITCh, 2007). Besides the glut of state provisions, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 allocated more than $20 billion to different measures (HIMSS, 2009), and the Affordable Care Act of 2010 added further money and aid...
This net of healthcare information system legislation is an effort to solve the issues surrounding the implementation of this issue and they have done a credible job. However, there are still issues that need to be addressed.
Problem Statement
Healthcare information systems are put in
place to aid the introduction of an individual's health information into a records keeping system. The old method of a nurse or other healthcare professional taking paper notes and assigning those to a folder is antiquated and problematic. It is very possible to make errors. It is difficult to share information with other professionals concerned with the patient's healthcare, and paper records are subject to quick decay. Many of these issues can be seen when people use health information technology also, but new generations are always trying to correct for these. The real problem with healthcare information systems legislation is that it creates a web of
bureaucracy that sometimes makes it difficult to properly treat patients, and even more problematic security issues can cause a great deal of problems for patients whose information is entered into an electronic database.
Legislation and Solutions
When lawmakers are made aware of a problem they will often rush to create legislation, especially if a new technology can potentially harm constituents, rather than allowing the technology to mature so that they can determine what is the best course of action. Unfortunately, by the time this happens, there is a large web of healthcare legislation that, though out of touch with the technology, is still in force and may hamper efforts to move forward. This is an unfortunate consequence of legislation in general.
The first attempt to somehow regulate the new technology was contained in the law that created HIPAA. This act was created to make sure that patients medical records remained private and secure. Only people who needed to know the information contained in a patient's record were allowed access. Knowing that this would be complicated with the introduction of healthcare information systems technology, HIPAA does have a provision for the securing of electronic medical records also (Maruca, 2010). This legislation has been successful, but it has had to be amended several times as new technology becomes available.
In 2004, President George W. Bush talked about electronic health records in his State of the Union Address. He said then that he…
