Role of Office of National Coordinator

Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) was created by George W. Bush in 2004 through an executive order and the congress mandated associated legislation. The ONC is an entity within the US Department of Health and Human Services. The main purpose of the ONC is basically to promote the national health information technology (HIT) infrastructure and oversee its development. In the context of the healthcare providers, the ONC is seen as a close associate to the nationwide push to have electronic health records to the patients in different hospitals all with the aim of curbing errors in the medical field and to do away with paper records.

The mission of the ONC is wide in scope and aimed at meeting the demands of HIT and includes coordination of policies, establishing governance for the eHealth Exchange, strategic planning for the adoption of the health IT as well as health information exchange and of utmost importance for ONC is promoting a national health IT infrastructure. The ultimate desired effect of ONC trough the aforementioned missions is to improve the healthcare while cutting down on the costs, a betterment of the coordination of care and information among labs, physicians, hospitals and other healthcare organizations. It also desires to ensure that the personal health records remain confidential and secure, and that there is early detection, prevention and management of chronic illnesses (Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, 2018).

The impact of the ONC has been a positive one, indeed one that has been emulated and replicated across the globe in other nations. The rate of retained data on patients has been staggering and the consistency of treatment offered to patients whose prior records can be accessed electronically has been impressive. Through the HIT and the safe storage of personal data of the patients, there have been smoother and faster coordination among the players in the health sector, ensuring expedited and better health care for patients across the US.

One of the most common form of data breaches in the healthcare sector is the hacking, where the private and sensitive information on individuals is stolen from the technology systems set up to store and protect such data. These breaches end up affecting individuals in their credit card statements or the benefits explanations. There have been several breaches over the years with 2016 being the year that saw some of the highest rates of breaches leading to massive losses on the side of the patients. Many governments have taken significant steps towards securing patient data and disallowing the easy unauthorized access to such information. For instance, the states of Nevada and Massachusetts have enacted statutes that require sufficient security measures from agencies operating within the states. Any agency conducting business with the residents herein are required to abide by some of the highest levels of information security programs. They are required to have encryptions, protect against data leakage and adopt a risk –based approach to ensuring security. Businesses in Nevada are further required to encrypt all transmissions of personal data (Thomson L.L, n.d:267).

Return on Assets (ROA) is an indicator of how effective managements of a business is in utilizing the assets of the business and reveals how much profits a company earns for every dollar of its assists. It is worth noting that the assets vary in range and include accounts receivable, equipment, cash in the bank, property, furniture and inventory. It is calculated by dividing Annual Net income/Total assets.

The Return On Equity (ROE) on the other hand is used to show whether the company is growing in value at the acceptable rate. Investors look at some fundamental ratios and the most important is probably the return on equity. This is the basic test of the effectiveness of the management in using the investors’ money (McCLure B., 2017).

This is the use of debt to acquire additional assets. It is also known as trading on equity. Leverage us employed in order to avoid using too much equity to fund operations. The benefits of the leverage is definitely that the company can expand faster through proper use of it, get more assets under its name and in effect increase its net worth in the market. The disadvantage of leverage is that if not properly regulated and utilized, there can be risks of failure of the company since it get hard for the company to repay hence predisposed to bankruptcy. It may also lead to cash flow challenges where the revenues may not be sufficient to cover the interests (Accounting for Management, 2017).