HITECH legislation incentives for meaningful use of electronic health records

HITECH Legislation

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act is something that gives the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) with the power to create programs that will improve health care quality, security, and competence through the advertising of health Information Technology, which comprises of electronic health records and secure and private electronic health information exchange. However, under HITECH, qualified health care specialists and hospitals are able to qualify for Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments when they accept certified EHR technology and utilize it to attain quantified purposes (Brokel, 2010). With that said, this paper will discuss the impact of the meaningful use criteria of the HITECH legislation on the adoption of health information technology.

Positive and Negative Impact at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital

The HITECH Legislation had a positive and negative impact on the researcher's organization which is Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. One of the positive things for the hospital was that this act helped to encourage the adoption of new technology within the healthcare industry; the HITECH sanctioned $20 billion of enticements to healthcare organizations such as Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital who demonstrate and implement meaningful use of an EMR. However, the hospital understood that failure to demonstrate use that was meaningful would result in monetary penalties (Wilcox, 2011). The passing of the HITECH has forced healthcare IT organizations such as Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital to shift their Informational Technology strategy. Here at the researcher's organization, the majority of their time and energy not must has to be spent focusing on a fruitful Emergency Medical Record implementation without meaningfully impacting the quality of patient care and daily actions.

It has been a positive experience because the increased pressure and modifications to Informational Technology strategy have made a very big impact on healthcare IT departments in Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. Traditionally at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital IT departments were staffed clinicians with restricted IT abilities.

Nevertheless, the new EMR products used at Phoebe are so cultured in process and work-flow that the organizations had to change their staff make-up and then hire on more technical staff. A lot of these departments for instance Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital have never been through a most significant system development, so they do not have the project management experience, requiring the hiring of project managers from other, non-healthcare businesses (Blumenthal, 2010).

It has been a positive at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital because it provided Complete and accurate information. With the aid of electronic health records, providers have the data they need in order to provide the best possible care that it can give. With this benefit at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, providers are now able to know more about their patients and their health history right before they are able to walk into the examination room.

It was also a positive for the organization because they were able to have much better access to information. Electronic health records are good for Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital because now they are able to facilitate a much greater admission to the information providers need to diagnose health difficulties earlier and progress the health results of their patients. Electronic health records likewise permit data to be shared more effortlessly among doctors' hospitals, offices, and across health systems, guiding to better organization of care (Gold & Bovbjerg, 2012). Having patient empowerment at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. Electronic health records at the hospital have helped empower patients to take a more involved role in their health and also in the health of their family members. Patients are now able to receive electronic copies of their medical records and then they are able to share their health information much more securely over the Internet with those in their families.

However, there negative side to the impact this legislation has had on Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. While the Information Technology may have rationalized the business procedure it has also produced job redundancies, outsourcing and downsizing. There are some at the hospital that are no longer employed because of the new technology that has been introduced (Gold & Bovbjerg, 2012). They are not needed because the jobs that they were doing can be done much better by a machine.

However, financial problems, involving adoption and implementation costs, continuing maintenance costs, loss of proceeds related with temporary loss of efficiency, and regressions in revenue, present a deterrent for Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital and physicians to implement and adopt an EHR. It has been discovered and mentioned by many employees that the maintenance cost of an EHR can also be expensive. Hardware must be substituted and software must be upgraded on a steady basis. Moreover, providers will always have to have some kind of ongoing training and upkeep for the end-users of an Emergency Health Records.

Another disadvantage of an Emergency Health Records is disturbance of work-flows for providers and medical staff, which consequence in temporary losses in efficiency. This loss of efficiency stalks from end-users learning the new system and may possibly lead to damages in money that they make. Another potential drawback of Emergency Health Records for Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital has been the risk of patient privacy violations, which is was a rising concern for patients because of the increasing quantity of health information that was being exchanged electronically. In order to relieve some of these worries, politicians have taken measures to ensure privacy and safety of patient data.

Incentives of Emergency Health Records

Research shows that a recent GAO report discovered that Medicare providers working with a regional extension center were over 2.3 times more probable to obtain an EHR incentive payment than those who were not (Blumenthal, 2010). As of March 2013, 70% of all local extension center-partnered FQHCs sources have established AIU expenditures and regional extension center providers at FQHCs have previously established more than $300 million that involve incentive dollars (Gold & Bovbjerg, 2012).

This is considered to be great advancement particularly for the Medicaid providers who are guiding the charge to Meaningful Use in grounding for care delivery models and new payment. There is an expectation that many more Medicare, Medicaid, and even those providers not qualified for CMS incentive payments take a parallel call to action and achieve meaningful use to establish their obligation to giving better and more comprehensive patients.