How Has Public Health Healthcare Improved Public Healthcare Services For Americans Over The Last Two Decades?

Hence, I believe that the health IT is essential to transform the delivery of health care. Now, America’s health care providers and data users have made a huge improvement in expanding health information technology use. This improvement ensures data user 's safety when they exchange information electronically to one another.

The high cost of healthcare continues to rise and many in the United States are optimistic for health information technology to reduce and improve our current situation. Health IT encompasses a broad array of new technologies designed to manage and share health-related information. When properly implemented, these systems can help coordinate patient care, reduce medical errors, and improve administrative efficiency. Therefore, implementing a Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO) will help the National Health Information Network (NHIN) achieve their goals in improving quality of care for the citizens of the United States. Thus, in order for the health IT to deliver on its promise, several obstacles must be overcome.

The health of the American people lags behind those from other developed countries. Federal public health agencies have a wide range of responsibilities and functions which includes public health research, funding, and oversight of direct healthcare providers. It has been a long time since changes have been made to the way the federal government structures its health care roles and programs outside of Medicare and Medicaid (Trust, 2013). With healthcare reform on the horizon now is the time to invest time and money in prevention, not medicine, making it a top priority to improve health and prevent disease. Funding efforts at all levels of the public health continuum need to focus on developing programs aimed at such leading initiatives

One of the greatest changes in healthcare in the past ten years has been the rise of managed care, much to the displeasure of many patients and physicians alike. Managed care arose out of concern about spiraling healthcare costs and was designed to encourage physicians to give patients treatments that were cost-effective out of their own financial interests. "The consumer strategy was directed at imposing some barriers to use by levying various forms of co-insurance. The most common approaches used either deductibles (where the consumer paid the first portion of the bill a technique familiar in other types of insurance) or co-payments (where the consumer paid a portion of the bill and the insurance company the rest) or a combination of both' (Kane et al 1994). Managed care has given health insurance companies an increasingly significant voice in how treatment is administered and allocated. Managed care has proliferated in the past decade despite considerable criticism of the practice of 'nickel and diming' patients as well as the considerable bureaucratic red tape it is has generated. Also, research indicates that healthy, well-insured patients tend to over-consume care without meaningful co-pays but poorer, sicker patients can be deterred even by moderate co-payments and suffer negative health consequences (Kane et al 1994). However, managed care has not gone away and is a reality that all healthcare

Health informatics is the bridging of computer science, information and the health care field. This interdisciplinary field can be applied to a range of medical fields such as nursing, biomedicine, medicine and subspecialties such as immunology (immunoinformatics). Informatics not only has roles to play in day-to-day areas of immunology such as data storage/retrieval, decision support, standards and electronic health care records but also in research and education such as data mining and simulation systems (Coiera, 2002). Informatics and more specifically, health informatics first started being used in in the late 1950s with the rise of computers (Ho, 2010). Technologies such as computers allowed practitioners and researches

Frisse, M. E. (2009). Health Information Technology: One Step At A Time. Health Affairs, 28(2), w379-w384. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.28.2.w379

7. Describe the main points of the Pod/Vodcast. Healthcare Informatics is defined by the U.S National Library of Medicine as the Interdisciplinary study of the design, development, adoption, and application of IT- based innovations in healthcare services delivery, management, and planning (Ong, 2014). Health informatics is being utilized to enhance process efficiency. The wave of health informatics began in the 1990’s. It has changed the way we do things from shopping to work to the way we live our daily lives (Kudyba, 2010). Health Informatics has doubled productivity (Kudyba, 2010). Healthcare is slowly emerging into the world of informatics. Many healthcare facilities are now utilizing electronic medical records. Healthcare Informatics will help reduce cost. Utilizing technology increases the speed of routing

The overall health care industry has undergone fundamental change over the last decade. Most of the changes have occurred within the underlying business operation of the healthcare industry. Legislation in particular has had a profound impact on the health care industry. First, due to the Affordable Care Act of 2010, the nursing profession is undergoing a fundamental shift in regards to the patient experience. The U.S. health care system is now shifting the focus from acute and specialty care to that of primary care which requires a shift in business operations. Also, due primarily to that aging of the baby boomer generation, the need for primary car overall is shifting and will be needed heavily in the future. The last 10 years in particular has seen an increasing influx of retiring baby boomers that subsequently need care. A positive impact on the ACA legislation is that more individuals are now insured. As such, the need for primary care will also increase over subsequent years, particular within the minority population. This patient centric approach will require more care predicated on specific communities in a seamless manner. Furthermore, primary care physicians will be in high demand over the coming years.

Healthcare is rapidly changing. From the 1850s until now, the focus of healthcare has shifted from an acute illness mentality to the overall long-term well-being of patients with the management of chronic illnesses (Williams & Torrens, 2008). This change is in large part due to the eradication of several deadly diseases such as smallpox and polio (Roser, n.d.). This step forward can be attributed to the development of antibiotics and more recently vaccines. Vaccines are now widely available and helped eradicated once deadly diseases (Paulson & Hammer, 2002). As the change in healthcare shift to a more patient-centered focus, we will see a great use of technology in the system.

Written by three doctors, who work with Public Health Informatics Institute, this article appears to be intended for medical professionals as well as the general public. The authors suggest that using EHRs in its fullest capacity, could greatly improve general population health in the US. Information such as influenza outbreaks, communicable diseases, and acute infectious gastrointestinal disease are currently reported to the CDC through use of EHRs. Under HITECH meaningful use laws, only syndromic surveillance, laboratory reporting, and registries are currently reported. The article also discusses the stages of meaningful use in depth and how each needs to be achieved in accordance with HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health). It is suggested that in the future, trending information could help isolate incidences of certain problems/diagnoses to certain geographical locations. This can potentially help practitioners in figuring out a source for such

Their duties include planning the information system, developing the health policy to suit this system and identifying the present and future information requirements. These professionals use informatics to collect, store, use, and transmit information in such a way that the expert, legal, and organizational record keeping needs of the healthcare institutes, are met. They also ensure appropriate collection, management and application of information within the healthcare system for purposes of effective detection of health problems and for identifying inventive solutions to improve health outcomes.

The idea of patient being actively engaged and involved in their own health is an important one. It is important that patients have access to technology that can help them keep track and take control of their health. Another important reason why research in Health Informatics is important is the benefit of having an impact on the general public. Research in public health informatics plays a vital role in the prevention of communicable diseases and outbreaks. It can also help public health officials plan better when it comes to

When implementing technology into healthcare, there may be advantages and disadvantages. The first advantage is efficiency. Informatics allows for a more conscientious way of caring for patients. Different departments can access patient records allowing for less errors and an easier way to gain knowledge about how to take care the patient. A second advantage is accuracy. Health informatics allows for a more accurate way of collecting pertinent information about a patient that can aid in the safety of the patient. With the right technology, the information can be accessed as soon as it is needed. Health informatics can also improve patient care by offering guidelines on the computer for the patient as well as the staff. This allows for less

Health information systems (HIS) are complex and it is helpful to understand advantages and disadvantages to some key components of a HIS. This section will describe the advantages and disadvantages of usability, interoperability, scalability and compatibility.

Effective public practices require accurate, timely, and reliable information from an extensive variety of sources. Although not well known, the public health sector was among the first to adopt computers and other relevant information technologies. The successful utilization of these systems in the provision of public health require the use of systematic and informed