Health is vied as one of the paramount pillars in the economy of any country. Heath citizens produce health workforce, which drive the economy positively. In developing countries where health economics is highly vulnerable, health departments have been reluctant to keep records of their citizens. Consequently, it is difficult for a country to realize the harzoudous diseases that threaten the stability of a country. This is attributed to the traditional manual entry of health records. The Federal government of United States in its quest to reform the health sector enacted the Health Information for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act).This was a stimulant to adopt Electronic health Records (EHR).The Act was signed into law in February 17th 2009 by the United States president, Barack Obama as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(ARRA).
The main goal of HITECH Act was to ensure that quality health care is improved in the country. It was the government’s commitment to harmonize health records of its citizens through electronic exchange to facilitate determination of the country’s health status. It was amended to include the Phrase “Meaningful Use’ which required that all health providers should ensure that quality achievements are realized through this approach. The government commitment to introduce financial incentives to health care providers to adopt the system by 2015.moreover provision of national infrastructure health research and training of health professionals in health information technology system. (Kempfert and Reed, 242).The government cautioned on all health providers on the practice of “willingful neglect” where providers continue to manually maintain health records at the expense of the electronic system. Heavy penalties were imposed ion the Act for the defaulters.
The Act introduced the privacy policy as an approach to safeguard the citizens’ records. This policy includes the business associates access to the electronic data. These business associates covered all third party contributors, for instance, health consultants, accountants, defense attorneys and patient billing service (Kempfert and Reed, 246). In our organization, adoptions of this act ha significantly contributed in the maintenance of heath records of patients. The management can be able to project the health trend of the surrounding community by reviewing the records .moreover; the heath facility is able to provide factual evidence of what they require to contain epidemics in the society. Through technological approach, we are able to compare and contrast the health status of other areas to prepare ourselves of unforeseen circumstances.
However, this system is not as smooth as said. Continuous update of the records has been hampered by rapid fluctuation in the health status of the community. In addition hacking of the system by experts to access personal health information has negatively affected the progress achieved. Another main challenge is the Act’s demand to prove meaningful usefulness of the system as a guarantee to receive financial incentives from the government.
The Federal government adopted the HITECH Act by including the words “Meaningful Use”. This phrase required health providers not only to implement the system but also ensure that quality achievement are made .EHR vendor institutions have been mandated to ensure that the systems adhere to the requirements of the Act .This requires them to include features that include the security provision of personal health records (PHI) to caution from exploitation by third parties to achieve self-gains. Approximately 49% of all vendors claimed meaningful use as their main goal for 2011 to achieve to remain relevant in the market system(Classen and Bates).This criteria requires the vendors to include features that will entail chronological data recording ,analytical methods and harmonizing data from other areas for a comprehensive conclusion. However, this requirement has proved hard due to due to inefficiency in innovation of the complex features by the tech-experts (Classen and Bates).It will be hard for institutions with less qualified staff to benefit financially due to their substandard system.
Introduction of financial incentives to the health providers motivates them to adopt the system .this has cautioned them from excess maintenance cost that could be forwarded to the consumers through service charges. Meaningful usefulness policy has ensured that only the deserving health providers are granted the incentives .This cautions the health sector from getting substandard systems whose lifespan is unpredictable.
The article on Benefits and drawbacks of electronic health records systems summarizes the impact of adoption of HITECH Act in the maintenance of health records It analyzes organizational and clinical outcomes and the challenges that accrue in thesytem.It also analyzes the loopholes that have resulted in non-performance of the system in attaining the “meaningful usefulness” threshold.
One of the criteria to measure meaningful usefulness is safeguarding the privacy of personal health records from intruders. This has been a challenge especially in terms of cost to hire experts who can derive applications of high quality. Besides, honesty among the health providers is a challenge those experts who designed the program are the same who engage in in unscrupulous deals with third parties to reveal confidential data. For instance, on-governmental organizations may need that data to base their platform to negotiate for funds from secondary sources besides the federal government. This article highlights organizational outcomes that result from the system. It averts cost of manual update of data thus eliminating redundancy of manual files, chart pulls, and supplies needed to maintain paper charts. (Menachem and Collum, 50). By ensuring data for the citizens is electronically available saves time for retrieval and protect it from easy manipulation through adoption of privacy policy. However, the system is not all smooth. Maintenance costs for the system, inadequate of experts to upgrade the system are a challenge. Recent studies estimated the cost of software to be between $50000 and $60000 though it is reducing with time .however this remains challenging to small health facilities, which struggle to obtain incentives from the government.
Conclusion
The HITECH act has come of age to improve health sector in the United States despite the financial and technical challenges. The government saves the cost of data retrieval and mostly reserves an updated heath status of its citizens. This cautions the government from un foreseen heath challenges.
References
Classen, D. C., & Bates, D. W. (2011). Finding the Meaning in Meaningful Use. Journal of medicine, 365(9), 1533-4406.
Menachemi, N., & Collum, T. (2011). Benefits and drawbacks of electronic health record systems. Dove Press Journal, (4), 47-55.
Kempfert, A., & Reed, B. (2011). Health Care Reform In the United States: HITECH Act and HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Enforcement Issues. FDCC Quarterly, 240-273.
