Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Legislation - Paper Example

Introduction

Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Statute was upheld by the Congress in America the year 2009. This is a component of America Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Sheikh, Sood & Bates, 2015). The goal was to raise the Health Information Technology (HIT) of the state's health care. HITECH Act had the primary aim of bringing up a way of bettering the quality, safety, and effectiveness of health services by elevating HIT and Electronic Health Records (EHRs) (McCullough, Parente & Town, 2016). This Act had given room for financial motivation to health workers that embraced electronic health records system that was noteful before 2015 ended. Those that did not implement ERH faced financial disincentives (Sheikh, Sood & Bates, 2015).

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HITECH Act had brought positive change to the health facility where I currently work. However, since I found ERH implementation already in place, I cannot tell when it was effected. The use of ERH has been facilitated by HITECH has gone a long way to ensure better care of our clients. Confidentiality issues have been on the rise and the use of EHR has improved the protection of the patients' details since their information can only be accessed by the relevant care providers. Fast and effective documentation of clients' information by the nurses is promoted. However, some disadvantages of the EHR system come as a result of some nurses not being comfortable with the electronic system and continue using papers to put information rather than using the computers. Secondly, implementation of the EHR systems is expensive for small facilities like where I work.

Conclusion

The following are some approaches that are monitored for meeting meaning use: promoting care coordination, proving enough security and confidentiality for health records, involving patients and their families, bettering public health and population (McCullough, Parente & Town, 2016). To show that an EHR really work, an article by Botruff and Stimson (2017) shows how trauma patients have benefited since they rely on ERH reports monitoring lab and medical results that can easily be omitted. Through the use of EHR the trauma unit was able to deal with the rising number of patients since it could give them a reliable medication and laboratory results that without this technology would have been missed. Additionally, meaningful use was noted especially in the clinical decision making since it was possible to run reports whenever needed (Botruff & Stimson, 2017).

References

Botruff, A. L., & Stimson, C. E. (2017). Daily electronic health record reports meet meaningful use requirements, improve care efficiency, and provide a layer of safety for trauma patients. Journal of Trauma Nursing, (1). 53.

McCullough, J. S., Parente, S. T., & Town, R. (2016). Health information technology and patient outcomes: the role of information and labor coordination. The RAND Journal of Economics, 47(1), 207-236.

Sheikh, A., Sood, H. S., & Bates, D. W. (2015). Leveraging health information technology to achieve the "triple aim" of healthcare reform. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 22(4), 849-856.