Patient Identity Management Research Paper

In 2009 The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) allocated approximately $19 billion to support physicians and hospitals in attaining meaningful use of health information technology (HIT). The meaningful use program is intended to facilitate providers to amass

Electronic health records (EHR) are health records that are generated by health care professionals when a patient is seen at a medical facility such as a hospital, mental health clinic, or pharmacy. The EHR contains the same information as paper based medical records like demographics, medical complaints and prescriptions. There are so many more benefits to the EHR than paper based medical records. Accuracy of diagnosis, quality and convenience of patient care, and patient participation are a few examples of the

HITECH Act was enacted to ensure meaningful use of electronic health records between members of the care team in order to increase patient

EHR was created to have a technical way to securely exchange private and personal medical health information in hopes to improve the quality of care, decrease medical errors, limiting paper use, reduction of health care cost, and increasing a person access to affordable health care. A mandate was created for EHR stating that health records can be accessible to all facilities with patients having the capability to access their own health records at any time. Ameliorating the quality and convenience of care given to a patient, allow for cost saving measures, engage the patient and family to participate in their care, improve accuracy of medical diagnosis, and enhance the efficiency of the overall outcome of the patients’ health.

There are few concerns regarding the HITECH Act that need to be addressed, such as Data breach of protected health information, EHR risk assessments and patients' electronic access to their health information, this access will allow them to view their records online, this kind of access electronic access might cause exposure to their health record online to a third party. Other concern is about the use of the electronic health records and whether it is capable of improving the quality of care and also some privacy and safety issues.

HIPAA and HITECH Act help address several problems associated with inappropriate use of healthcare information by authorized users. HIPAA requires minimum necessary infor-mation to be released while HITECH goes into a little further detail but still to release minimum necessary information. Several different organizations need to define how they go about han-dling inappropriate use of information. A guideline must be set within the organization on who will have access to the information and how it is disbursed to other healthcare organizations re-questing records.

“The HITECH Act seeks to change that situation by providing each person in the United States with an EHR. In addition, a nationwide health information technology (HIT) infrastructure will be developed so that access to a person’s HER will be readily available to every healthcare provider who treats the patient, no matter where the patient may be located at the time treatment is rendered” (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015).

In order to accelerate the use of health information technology, the U.S. government enacted the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Aforementioned, in 2011 The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services EHR incentive program for meaningful use was started. According to Gialanella (2015), this particular program was initiated as a direct result of a federal policy that was passed in the year of 2009, called the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. The purpose of Meaningful Use stated Chin and Sakuda (2012) to “better the health of patients, better healthcare in general, and better the value of healthcare”. Based on the ideas of Chin and Sakuda (2012) the concept was considered as the 3Bs to be “societal, ethical, and fiscal imperatives”. With the implementation of electronic health records, CMS considered this to be as act of meaningful use of which was set to” improve and reduce the major line of demarcation in healthcare, as well as

The HITECH Act was established in part with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Office of Civil Rights). This act was implemented in 2009 to promote meaningful use of health information technology, such as electronic heath records and their appropriate applications (Office of Civil Rights). McKesson electronic records and their products have adopted this act in the way that they promote and utilize their products (McKesson 2016). Thus, in conjunction with this act McKesson products have a goal of at least five percent of patient’s being discharged will be able to utilized their electronic health record (McKesson 2016). This is supported by the evidence based

HITECH are laws that were created to support the transition to electronic health records. These laws support the healthcare organization technology, with proper training centers and programs. HITECH helps reinforce HIPAA’s privacy and security laws with EHR.

Legislation such as the Health Information Technology for Economics and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act promoted meaningful use of electronic health records (EHR) to provide better patient outcomes (CDC, n.d.). Meaningful use is regulated by CMS and National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and is based on five goals including: improving quality, safety, efficiency and reducing health disparities, engage patients and families in their health, improve care coordination, improve population and public health,

In 2009 the HITECH Act was authorized with the reason to enhance wellbeing for Americans; however fulfilling the necessities of the Act possibly decreases the nature of the consideration given to the patient because of the expanded weights certain medical professional financing, including concedes and credits; money related motivations through Medicaid and Medicare; quality, well being and security; models; and monetary motivating forces to social insurance experts and healing centers. The medical providers and or professionals must utilize Electronic Health Record (EHR) Technology and conform to Meaningful Use. At first, medical personnel were and are adjusted for taking part in Meaningful Use, on the other hand, a definitive deciding result is medical professionals are punished if the 15 Core Measures for which they authenticate are not met. Despite the fact that the incentive of

“An electronic health record (EHR) is a digital version of a patient’s paper chart. EHRs are real-time, patient-centered records that make information available instantly and securely to authorized users.” (healthit.gov) The EHR mandate was created “to share information with other health care providers and organizations – such as laboratories, specialists, medical imaging facilities, pharmacies, emergency facilities, and school and workplace clinics – so they contain information from all clinicians involved in a patient’s care.” ("Providers & Professionals | HealthIT.gov", n.d., p. 1) The process has proved to be quite challenging for providers. As an

The field of Health Information Technology (HIT) came into light with the mandatory installation of Electronic Health Records (EHR) as part of the HITECH act. HIT is defined as “the overarching term applied to various information and communication technologies used to collect, transmit, display, or store patient data” [Add reference ‘Defn