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The Pros And Cons Of The HITECH Act

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Interestingly, the findings from the review of literature shed light to the challenges nurses encounter with the implementation of electronic health records and identify areas for improvement that could be made in an effort to achieve the goals of the HITECH act. Based on the review of literature, overall, the electronic health record is seen as a positive aspect to assisting nurses in providing positive outcomes for patients. However, challenges still exist with the daily utilization of the EHR, with communication among healthcare providers and interdisciplinary teams. These challenges present nurses with great difficulty as they attempt to provide care to their patients. Because some nurses continue to struggle with utilizing the electronic …show more content…

The HITECH Act was developed so encourage the dissemination of health information technology, which was believed to facilitate improved patient and decrease the cost of healthcare for patients. Yet, even though hospitals are receiving incentives and are adhering to requirements placed on them, nursing staff are struggling due to interruption in workflow and loss in productivity due to time spent learning to use an electronic health record. Nurses are also challenged with technical issues that arise, while providing patient care, which limits their access to patient information. Nevertheless, advantages due to exist to utilizing electronic health record, which include less medical errors, and an improvement in the overall health of populations. Additionally, there is a reduced cost of healthcare for patients as less repetition in treatments and labs are done for patients. Nurse educators have a key role in educating nursing staff on requirements of electronic health records and assisting in a smooth transition. A modification to the HITECH Act to address documentation, may assist in better workflow for nurses. Modification could ensure that only pertinent information requires documentation and then healthcare facilities compliant with the HITECH Act could modify their policies to reflect the

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The HITECH Act is a big portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that promotes the widespread adoption of electronic health records/health information technology. It was passed because of the aforementioned and it provided benefits to patients/providers alike. The ARRA itself (which, of course includes the HITECH Act) was in response to the economic crisis of 2007-2009. The HITECH Act was ultimately designed to improve safety, quality, and efficiency. By responding to the Act's incentives, healthcare organizations can have patients discharged quicker because having information through technology is quicker and easier to maintain than paper-based, there would be improved clinical outcomes, as patient quality would improve, and medical

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450 Words | 2 Pages

Electronic health records are essential in allowing physicians to monitor their patients’ health, notice trends, and potentially prevent hospital readmissions, quickly diagnose diseases, and reduce medical errors. This is the first in a series of blog posts where we ask the question “What is Meaningful Use of an EHR?” In this post, we interview a physician at a family practice to learn more about how he is meaningfully using his EHR to coordinate patient care, prevent a hospital readmission and ultimately improve patient health. On the day we spoke, Dr. Frank Maselli of Riverdale Family Practice in the Bronx had just finished seeing 30 patients.

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HITECH is a law that was designed to push the United States into the new tech world of healthcare. The law provides the authority to make changes that can improve healthcare quality, safety, and efficiency through the use of HER and the exchange of health information. HITECH is the meaningful use provision, which offers incentives to organizations that adopt and implement EHR’s. These standards allow hospitals and individual providers deemed eligible to obtain incentive. The HITECH Act is designed to facilitate the transition of physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare providers.

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The resources above expanded on knowledge concerning the definition, evolution, proposed outcomes, research and the technology of meaningful use of the electronic health record. Nursing administrators, staff nurses, and nursing informaticists all perform an essential role in achieving meaningful use of the electronic medical record to improve patient care. Certain authors referenced other authors proving that the health information technology field is indeed a tightknit community. The resources were well written from highly credentialed authors and were, for the most part, easy to comprehend. All of these articles were written for the nursing professional with the exception of resource

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622 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout the past decades, many acts have been passed in support of health information technology and the adaptation of such technology. Two of those acts, the HIPAA (health insurance portability and accountability) Act and the HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act, focus on protecting patient health information and utilizing health information technology. Although these acts bring about many positive changes within the healthcare industry, there are some downsides regarding the implementation of these acts, as there are with many acts that are passed. Both of these acts provide security to patient health information, however, the HITECH Act contributes more to the utilization of the electronic health

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409 Words | 2 Pages

In her assessment of the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act (ARRA), Murphy (2009) discusses how its enactment provided unprecedented funding for the advancement of health information technology (HIT) which served to promote health care reform. Electronic health records (EHRs) by extension received a boost via incentivization for appropriate use in hospitals and ambulatory settings (Murphy, 2009). The benefits of EHRs include the ability to improve the delivery and quality of nursing care, the ability to make more timely and efficient nursing care decisions for nursing, the ability to avoid errors that might harm patients and the ability to promote health and wellness for the patients (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). An appropriate use of EHR

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Electronic Health Records and Patient Confidentiality Technology has become an essential part of our everyday life therefore, it makes sense that doctors and hospitals get rid of the old fashioned paper charting and use technology to access patient records. Electronic health records (EHR) provide quick access to information, as doctors no longer have to wait for other providers to fax previous records to them. The accessibility of Electronic Health Records assist medical providers to make quick medical care decisions, by accessing previous care provided to patients including treatment and diagnosis. Quick access to information through EHR enables health care providers to treat patients faster as there is no need for records to be mailed or

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355 Words | 2 Pages

Other than HIPAA, Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act is a major federal policy initiative that affects the healthcare information technology (HIT) in the past years. However, its policy is used to protect the EHR system from a security breach that can cause multi-million dollar fines to the company (Campus Safety Magazine, 2010). In 2009, President Obama signed HITECH Act as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with authority, so it can establish programs that will improve healthcare quality, safety, and efficiency using HIT (Hebda & Czar, 2013). Certainly, HITECH is one of the significant health care reforms that have a major

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552 Words | 3 Pages

The goal of HITECH is to have computers in the healthcare facility to improve quality, safety, and efficiency. It is crucial that electronic exchange health information is secure of all breaches just like the HIPPA law. These laws are essential because without these laws the patient's report will have no

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520 Words | 3 Pages

Starting in 2009, in the result of the HITECH Act, institutions were rewarded financially for implementing these electronic health record systems into their practices, with more than $35 billion invested. According toWithin a few years, the rates of Medicare or Medicaid EHR adoption increased dramatically for physicians and hospitals. From 2010 to 2012, hospital EHR implementation rates grew to 44%, while physician EHR implementation rose from 20% to 40%, and those rates should keep rising (Cite One). The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act is mainly looked at for reduction in health disparities. One tactic being used to fight these health disparities is researching demographic data and applying this data to electronic health records.

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Most importantly, nurses need to follow the standards and requirement of their organization when working with computers. Even though the availability of the EHR has made it easier for health care professionals to access health information, it has created a challenge to the health industry to protect health information from hackers. It is important that nurses are aware of the new electronic technology and learn how to manage and use the processes although nurses are known to resist change (Chand 2014). It is very important to maintain hospital standards before the release of any health information; health care professionals should use proper techniques that will safeguard patient information and protect it from inappropriate uses (Brown 2009). Nurses should monitor their surroundings when documenting information and opening files that contain information about the patient.

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558 Words | 3 Pages

We as nurses will need to document information pertaining to the nursing process, as in vital signs, medications and any patient teaching provided. I can use informatics to also complete discharge planning along with other communication purposes like SBAR’s and patient transfers. We have to remember though, that with this newfound way of communicating, there are many risk factors involved. One of them is making sure that we do not violate the HIPAA guidelines. The Health Information Protection and Accountability Act (HIPAA) guidelines expand on meeting needs for exchange of protected health information for continues care while requiring informed consent and tracking disclosure of other request for information” (Hebda, T., & Czar, P., 2013).

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333 Words | 2 Pages

My experience with electronic medical record (EMR) is great. As a nurse it helps me access relevant patient information with a click of a button and guarded me from making medical errors. According Mason, Leavitt and Chaffee (2014), electronic medical record (EMR) has shown to improve patient safety, enhance quality, reduce workloads, and improve care coordination. Moreover, it captures information from laboratory, pharmacy, radiology, and equipment, such as EKG, smart pumps and etc.

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2716 Words | 11 Pages

Implementation of an electronic medical record system in hospital can result in a positive impact and beneficial in developed a better health care organization. Last but not least, the healthcare industry todays needs to realize that IT as a fundamental asset in providing efficient health related information services and improving the quality of medical services and patient

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916 Words | 4 Pages

As nurses become more educated about nursing informatics, they will gain the skills needed to master and apply nursing informatics to nursing practice. It is important that nurses have informatics skills because it saves nurses’ plenty of time. The implementation of the electronic health record (EHR) allows for easier and more efficient data-entry and access to patient health information. This electronic documentation of patient health history saves nurses the time it takes to manually write and/or obtain patient health records. By becoming more skilled in nursing informatics, nurses will learn to be more familiar with the electronic data-entry and data-retrieval processes, allowing for less time recording and retrieving information, and more time at the bedside with

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