Health Information Technology Impact Health Care

While advancements in technology have positively impacted the nursing field, it has also created huge concerns with patient privacy and sharing of protected health information leading to detrimental effects to patients and their families. Indeed, technology is changing the face of healthcare with positive innovations to reduce medication errors and documentation errors. However, technology at our fingertips has created immense concerns with sharing of protected health information of patients via social media, email and other means of communication via technology. This paper addresses why I feel the advancement of technology has numerous deficits that need more research and implementation of new laws and policies to safeguard the

In 2009, the U.S. Government passed The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, to promote the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology (Mangalmurti, Murtagh and Mello 2060). The HITECH Act authorizes grants and incentives to promote the “meaningful use” of electronic health records (EHR) by providers (2060). The effect is a high commitment to a technology-led system reform, urging a renewed national commitment to building an information infrastructure to support health care delivery, consumer health, quality measurement and improvement, public accountability, clinical and health services research, and clinical

An ACO are groups of healthcare providers who work together to provide cost efficient care for Medicare patients. Nurses will help an ACO by functioning as a care coordinator of Quality Improvement Manager. Care coordinators will have to manage care with doctor offices, hospitals, rehab centers, and home settings, Quality Improvement Managers will focus on analyzing data and promoting evidence based practices.

ACO, another 3 letter health care organization consisting of integrated groups of providers, comes along promising the elusive goal of reducing health care cost, improving population health, and bolstering custom satisfaction. Sounds like a perpetual remake of a 70s movie called HMO that went through several reiterations over the past decades which gave us PPO, PSO, IDS, and the different flavors of MCOs. ACO’s hype is credited to the Affordable Care Act as it sought to reduce health care costs is by encouraging doctors, hospitals and other health care providers to form networks that coordinate patient care and become eligible for bonuses when they deliver that care more efficiently. Bottom line, providers are promised to make more if they

The Accountable Care Organization (ACO) are groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers, who come together voluntarily to give coordinated high-quality care to their Medicare patients (McCarty, B., 2016). For example, Medicare Shared Savings Program was created by The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services to monitor and establish that all ACO’s are meeting the quality performance benchmarks and reduce Medicare spending by certain percentages (H., 2017). The growth of ACO’s from 2011 to 2016 is astonishing, in 2011 there was 64 ACO’s and by 2016 they have risen to 838 in the U.S. (H., 2017).

The Affordable Care Act created a new approach to care which is called the Accountable Care Organization. ACO is a system of doctors and hospitals that share a financial and medical responsibilities. If the ACO is successful in meeting quality and cost savings targets, these organizations qualify for financial incentives or shared saving from Medicare programs. The goal of the ACO is to coordinate

The concept of an Affordable accountable cCare oOrganization (ACO) is still evolving. Generally, an ACO is a group of health care providers (including primary care physicians, specialists, and medical facilities) that work in partnership and are collectively accountable for the cost and quality of health care they deliver to a specific population of patients. At the heart of each patient's care is a primary care physician.

Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are consist of providers who are jointly held accountable for achieving measured quality improvements and reductions in the rate of spending growth.

In the past few years the American health care system has changed in many ways. First there was the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which is a law that is giving Americans the opportunity to obtain health care. Under this new law, in 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services decided to create Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) to help doctors, hospitals and other providers better coordinate care (AthenaHealth.com). The first idea of an Accountable Care Organization was brought up in 2006 by Elliot Fisher, MD, and now there are over 400 in the United States (Healthcatalyst.com). An ACO’s primary job is to improve health care delivery, performance, and payment. This is done through physicians and

Providing enhanced access to a better quality health care system is reliant upon the identification and modification of various barriers, which must be addressed. Complex health care systems and politics generate barriers to the delivery of high-quality access to care through knowledge deficits. Consumers are tasked with understanding what services are needed as well as their abilities comprehend their diagnoses are challenged. They must also over come barriers to communication to converse effectively with caregivers. Most importantly, they must understand their role in the process as patients and citizens when accessing health care services. (Ricketts, 2013) Comprehensive provisions built into the ACA help to energize endeavors aimed towards developing ways to ensured enhancements to the quality and access to health care provided in North Carolina. Accountable care organizations (ACO) were

​Kaiser Health News recently published an article on a new trend in healthcare. This trend introduces the Accountable Care Organization (ACO). The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services defines it as “groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers, who come together voluntarily to give coordinated high quality care to their Medicare patients” (“Accountable Care Organization,” 2015). According to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the goal of the ACO is to be able to share health cost-savings with providers who are able to save money by eliminating unnecessary procedures and reduce health costs while increasing quality of care. ACOs make health professionals become more accountable in maintaining good-quality, coordinated healthcare for a patient through a value-based system that is evaluated through a number of criteria and benchmarks (Ronai, 2011).

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) legislated in 2010, has changed the United States health care industry. In addition to universal healthcare, one of the principles of the ACA is the ideal of accountable care. Specifically, adopting an Accountable Care organization (ACO) for Medicare beneficiaries under the fee for service program. An ACO seeks to hold providers and health organizations accountable for not only the quality of health care they provide to a population, but also keeping the cost of care down (1). This is accomplished by offering financial incentives to the healthcare providers that cooperate in, circumventing avoidable tests and procedures. The ACO model, seeks to remove present obstacles to refining the value of care, including a payment system that rewards the volume and intensity of provided services instead of quality and cost performance and commonly held assumptions that more medical care is equivalent to higher quality care (2) .A successful ACO model, will have developed quality clinical work and continual improvement while effectively managing costs, however this is contingent upon its ability to encourage hospitals, physicians, post-acute care facilities, and other providers involved to form connections that aid in coordination of care delivery throughout different settings and groups, and evaluate data on costs and outcomes(3). This establishes the ACO will need to have organizational aptitude to institute an administrative body to manage patient care,

According to Shi and Singh an accountable care organization, also known as an ACO, describes an integrated group of providers who are willing and able to take responsibility for improving the overall health status, care efficiency, and satisfaction with care for a defined population. The ACO was established by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) Section 3022 mainly to better the quality of care to beneficiaries and to save money for Medicare (Golden). The accountable care organization is voluntary for provider participation and Medicare beneficiaries still can choose treatment from any provider they wish which is beneficial. The ACO has been viewed as a potential tool for rebuilding the traditional Medicare coverage according to Medicare Payment Advisory Commission known as MedPAC (Rosenbaum). According to CMS,

The American health care system has been victim to an escalation in the prices of health care services juxtaposed with inefficiency in delivery of care services. There has even been cases where State spending on the actual health care increased dramatically in the United States and one of the key components of curbing this problem which has been prevalent over the mass media and has been a major discussion among physicians is the advent of Accountable Care Organizations. Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) is structured with the goal of trying to improve health care delivery and aid in the reduction of the overall cost of services (Weissert & Weissert, 2012). If there is insufficient coordination of high quality care delivery in the health care industry, this will have a negative impact on patient safety and diminish affordable care for patients. Hence, the development of ACOs is envisioned to be the savior of medical practices and can improve the overall fabric of the American society (Bresnick, 2013). ACOs serves as one of the answers for curbing the problem of high costs, low quality care and possible segmented delivery and as much as it serve as the major determinant for improvement in patient satisfaction, there are minor

Some alcohol and drug abuse records were inadvertently left accessible via the internet. Fifty patients were affected.