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Reducing Healthcare Spending : The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act

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Module 4 – Reducing Healthcare Spending President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as ACA, in March 2010, to reign in the excessive costs of healthcare in the United States. Three key goals of the newly adopted healthcare reform are improving quality and lowering healthcare costs, elimination of pre-existing condition clause, and increased access to healthcare (HHS, 2015). In 2015 more than 11.4 million people signed up for ACA in the second year; most of them uninsured in prior years (HHS, 2015). Prior to ACA, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provided that among other items, $19.2 billion (Healthcare IT News, 2015) was directed to health …show more content…

Health Information Technology Utilization At Hill Physicians Medical Group (HPMG), health innovation is three fold. First, physicians track the individual medical records of the consumer using NextGen EMR which is more effective and efficient than passing paper charts. Secondly, they utilize software called Ascender to enhance screening and testing. Finally, they implemented RelayHealth that allows the consumer a free portal to communicate with the physician or staff (Emswiler, and Nichols, 2009). While HPMG utilization of health information technology in three distinct manners certainly puts them ahead of many healthcare providers back in 2007, with ARRA and ACA, healthcare providers are required to implement electronic health records in some form. By 2013 over 63% of physicians in the United States adopted electronic health records and another 28% have a system partially implemented or plan to implement one in the next two years (The Commonwealth Fund, 2015). With 91% of physicians either having a system implemented or planning to implement, electronic health records are certainly a system that was replicated throughout healthcare in 2014. Electronic health records, like electronic medical records, contain detailed information about a patient’s health status, but they also provide a larger view of the patient’s care. They are records intended to be

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