Public Health Information Systems

Health information management, also known as HIM, has been acknowledged as an allied health profession since 1928. HIM is a profession dedicated to the effective management of patient information and healthcare data needed to deliver quality treatment and care to the public. The original objective was to elevate the standards of clinical recordkeeping in hospitals, dispensaries, and other healthcare facilities (Sayles, 2014). Today HIM is known as the American Health Information Management Association or AHIMA. It still holds similar underlying purposes: to ensure the quality, confidentiality, and availability of health information across diverse organizations, settings, and disciplines (Sayles, 2014). HIM plays a critical role in the successful implementation of electronic health records and ensures that providers, healthcare organizations, and patients have access to the right health information when and where it is needed while maintaining the highest standards of data integrity, confidentiality, and security. It ensures compliance with legal mandates, but it has proven to be a challenge with the constant change in legislation and regulatory environment. Past surveys suggest that HIM plays some type of importance in accordance to HIPAA privacy and security compliance. In a 2006 AHIMA survey, members were asked about the progress of their organizations’ privacy and security compliance efforts. Margret Amatayakul & Mitch Work discuss those results in a 2007 journal article

Public health and health care delivery systems complement each other as they are all theoretically geared towards proactively preventing disease, and illness. They both work in their own way to ensure that the clients they see are well taken care of; however, the methods may vary. Public health can be likened to an umbrella simply because it is so broad, and the health care delivery system could be any health provider or system under the umbrella. In order for an umbrella to work properly there has to be someone to operate it.

The purpose of this article is to examine an innovative health information technology based approach that is tailored to educate families about pediatric obesity and the associated health behaviors. It discusses the importance of advancing and improving health by utilizing innovative methods, such as health information technology (HIT). HIT systems are technology-based structures that allow access and exchange of information, computerization and improvement of decision making, and facilitation of behavior modifications to encourage healthier lifestyles.

While both medical care and public health work to improve the lives of many people, there are several distinctions between the two fields. Healthcare providers such as nurses and doctors are responsible for diagnosing and treating illnesses for individual patients. The care ranges from minor injuries to severe and chronic diseases. Meanwhile, public health strives to improve the well-being of a population. Public health advocates for the overall “promotion and prevention” of diseases before it even becomes an issue for healthcare providers. Public health encourages people to adopt healthy lifestyle choices and strives to control the outbreak of diseases. Although public health is often overlooked in the grand scale of medical care, it is undoubtedly the main aspect in ensuring that the overall health of a community is prospering.

Public health is positioned as one in light of the fact that public health is central to 21st century medicinal services and shares the same general objectives as whatever is left of the health care framework - lessening sudden death and minimizing the impacts of ailment, incapacity, and damage furthermore gives financial and social advantages to the area, due to some degree to expanded profit.

“Go Paperless and Get Paid” is how the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) presents the incentives for electronic health records. The United States Department of Health and Human Services (U.S. Department of HHS) distributed more than $160 billion dollars to “improve and preserve health care, health information technology, community health, and prevention initiatives” (United States Department of Health and Human Services [HHS], 2014e). Likewise, the ONC offers “Health IT Adoption Programs” through the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, seeking to advance the American health care delivery system and to improve patient care through an unique investment towards health information technology (HHS, 2014d). Additionally, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 allows the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to reward eligible hospitals and professionals with monetary incentives as they implement, adopt, or upgrade and demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health record (EHR) technology (HHS, 2014b). The Electronic Health Records Improvement Act (H.R. 1331) introduced by the United States House of Representative Diane Black is a bill to further improve the nation’s health care adoption of health information technology.

Medicine has come a long way in the past few decades. Today’s doctors and nurses have some amazing tools at their disposals. The latest high tech equipment, modern pharmaceuticals and procedures but in many cases the most important tool that is needed is information. Patient information to be more precise is what is needed. Correct and up to the minute information about a patients history is a vital part of treatment. And yet for many, access to this most important vital tool still lingers in the dark ages. It can be found scattered around filing systems in different offices, highly subject to retrieval by hand and accessible only by phone or fax. There is a

Recent reforms in health care, such as the passage of measures mandating electronic health care records, make unified public health information systems an increasingly viable option for providers, insurance companies, and care facilities. An examination of the experience of the Missouri Department of Health indicates that the construction of such a system based on information engineering has a number of benefits but only if properly implemented with prudent foresight. Some of the most valuable lessons learned that can assist other health care providers with the implementation of a similar system include protecting client confidentiality, procuring funding, sharing information with other agencies, gaining executive sponsorship, and allocating a sufficient amount of time and resources to such an undertaking.

Unless the technical and political issues that have been affecting the Healthcare.gov website to malfunction are controlled and driven out, the new “Obamacare” will become a high cost and frustration for consumers to use. To date consumers in St Louis and the Metro East along with the rest of America, have not been thrilled with the Health Insurance Marketplace website at healthcare.gov, which is the initial step towards the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The site has been choked with enrollees trying to meet the December 15, 2013 deadline, which is necessary if they want coverage that begins January 1, 2014. Open enrollment ends March 31, giving inadequate time to prepare for the major changes ahead in access to

There are many components that required to building a successful framework for a new health information system. Some of these components include (1) better patient experiences through quality and satisfaction; (2) better health outcomes of populations; and (3) reduction of per capita cost of health care (Feldman, 2014, para. 3). Other designs include several levels of abstraction including mechanical (hardware), informational (software), psychological (person), and social (community). Such an inclusive approach is aimed at understanding interdependent linkages between increasingly complex social and technological components. Working together, these components consider social motivations and accomplish a set of social goals that otherwise

Health Informatics created two main categories such as clinical and administrative information systems to meet the needs of one or more department within the health care organization. For the clinical information system, it is set to meet the needs in improving patient care. Therefore, the clinical information system (CIS) categories provide nurses information systems (NIS) that support the way nurses documents the care that given to the patients. However, to improve the delivery of nursing care, the healthcare organization must adopt a computer system that can successfully incorporate tools that will benefit nursing. There is two vendors’ software that implies these characteristics for the

Today’s healthcare industry relies heavily on interoperability standards to ensure that the correct data is available when needed. Not only is it important for patients and providers to have access to this information, but it is also important that the information is accessible in a way that is reliable and meaningfully used. In healthcare, interoperability can be defined as the “ability of different information technology systems and software applications to communicate, exchange data, and use the information that has been exchanged” (HIMSS Dictionary of Healthcare Information Technology, Terms, Acronyms and Organizations, 2013). Effective interoperability should mean that health information systems can work together within and across organizational boundaries for to advance the quality of healthcare to individuals and communities alike.

Demographic shifts in the global population, greater levels of technological disruption due to the Internet, social media and the en masse adoption of smartphones and tablet PCs are together re-defining the healthcare informatics market. System and informatics theories have emerged as the foundational elements of healthcare informatics supported by the Data, Information. Knowledge (DIK) Model which acts as a taxonomy for these developments (Haugh, 2005). Systems and informatics theories along with the DIK Model form the ontological foundations of healthcare informatics field of research occurring today and will continue to provide a basis for further research (Braganza, 2004). The intent of this analysis is to evaluate the contributions of systems and informatics, the role of the DIK Model, expert systems in nurse care and medicine, and the use of decision aids and decision support systems. All of these elements are critically important to strategic information systems plans healthcare providers put into place to serve patients while giving healthcare professionals the applications, systems and software they need to excel in their roles (Djellal, Gallouj, 2007).

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