The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act

In 2009, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was passed into law as a stimulus package in efforts to reverse the financial recession in the United States. Part of the legislation included, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act that incentivized hospitals and physician practices to adopt certified electronic health records (EHR) and to encourage the use of health care technology in a meaningful way (Falk, 2014). The ultimate goal of HITECH and Meaningful Use (MU) is to create a national healthcare infrastructure that is connected, develop systems to warehouse and share data, and in turn improve care and efficiencies for patients and providers (Blumenthal & Tavenner, 2010). The raid adoption

Meaningful Use engages patients and families in their health care, improve care coordination, improve population and public health and maintain privacy and security ("CMS," 2015, para. 1). Healthcare providers must show CMS that they are using their EHRs in ways that can positively affect the care of their patients. To do this, providers must meet all of the requirements established by CMS for this program and be able to demonstrate Meaningful Use of their EHRs to receive incentive reimbursement. The Meaningful Use program is divided into 3 stages which span 2011 (data capture and sharing), 2013 (advanced clinical processes) and 2015 (improved outcomes).

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the electronic health record mandate. Who started it and when? I will discuss the goals of the mandate. I will discussion will how the Affordable Care Act ties into the mandate of Electronic Health Record. It will describe my own facility’s EHR and what steps are been taken to implement it. I will describe the term “meaningful use,” and it will discuss possible threats to patient confidentiality and the what’s being done by my facility to prevent Health Information and Portability Accountability Act or HIPAA violations.

The American Recovery Reinvestment Act is designed to stimulate the economy or increase aggregate demand and was signed by President Barak Obama in 2009. Some of the major expenditures of the ARRA are tax cuts, healthcare, education, the environment, social welfare, infrastructure, energy, housing, research, etc. Fiscal policy is when the government is using taxes and spending to alter change macroeconomic outcomes. The government has three options when it comes to changing the outcome: increase/decrease taxes, transfer payments, or government spending. Government spending is classified as healthcare, education and the environment because all the money is being spent on the economy. Tax cuts is its own category and if we increase taxes then

Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on February 17, 2009. President Obama signed the act into law four days later. The law directed about $150 billion in new funds to the healthcare industry. It included $87 million for Medicaid, $24.7 billion to subsidize private health insurance for people who lose or have lost their jobs, $19.2 billion for health information technology, and $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The act also provided $650 million to support preventive medicine and wellness activities targeting health issues such as; obesity, smoking, and other risk factors for chronic diseases as well as $500 million for health professions training programs. This legislation has helped stimulate the

Organizations will have these incentives and programs in place that will seek to improve the over all health of Americans along with the performance of our health care system. “Meaningful Use” through the use of the electronic medical records system will have five areas that they will be focusing on to do just that. These goals consist of;

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act made an investment in the year 2009 to encourage the adoption and implementation of the electronic health records (EHRs)(Cite). EHRs incentive payments were authorized through Medicare and Medicaid to clinicians and hospitals when they privately and securely used EHRs for achieving improvements in care delivery by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH). The healthcare organizations are expected to demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs. This rule of meaningful use has been implemented to strike a balance between acknowledging the urgency of adopting EHRs for improving the healthcare system and identifying the challenges that would be put forth

In 2009, President Obama signed the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act to promote meaningful use of health information technology (Jha, 2015). Before the HITECH Act was passed, only about 17% of U.S. doctors and about 9% of U.S. hospitals were using an EHR according to Jha (2015). During 2013, the percentages increased to

As part of the 2009 Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Obama Administration secured $4.35 billion to encourage state-led education reforms known as the Blueprint for Reform. The Blueprint for Reform was a proposal to change the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which was first established in 1965 (Rochefort and Donnelly, 2011, p4). In 2002, President George W. Bush‘s made changes to the Act by introducing his education reform plan, No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Obama‘s Blueprint for Reform proposal involves changing NCLB as well as encourage the adoption of college and career-ready student education standards (Rochefort and Donnelly, 2011, p4). One of the educational programs of the Blueprint of Reform is the Race to the Top program.

In 2009, more than $30 billion dollars in incentives was allocated by congress for hospitals to institute meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs) by 2011 (Adler-Milstein, Bates, & Jha, 2011) (Murphy, 2010). The Meaningful Use Act is a complicated principle that is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) as well as the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) act.

In 2008, the housing market crashed, businesses were failing, and people were losing their jobs. This is how Barack Obama started off his presidency. Already, fingers were being pointed and cries were maybe. This would be the start off to Obama’s presidency. His creation of the Stimulus Package created a lot of criticism, but at the end of the day, it fixed the economy. Now Obama is ending his presidency with a flourishing economy and GDP Growth. Even if the Stimulus Package was one of the most criticized plans in his presidency, it did exactly what it was meant for, which was to fix the economy and create growth.

People believe the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act or ARRA had a centralizing effect, yet there are motives that support, as well as some that oppose the act. The act is sometimes referred to as The Stimulus or The Recovery Act. The United States Congress in February of 2009 passed this Act and it was signed in the same month, by President Barack Obama.

The goal in healthcare today is to achieve better patient outcomes. Technology is changing daily that affects how patient care is provided. As the world around us continues to move into a more advanced technology based healthcare system incentives are offered to qualifying healthcare entities, provided they are utilizing approved health information technology (IT) to comply with standards set by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) (Jones, Rudin, Perry, & Shekelle, 2014). Standards such as meaningful use help ensure with the use of electronic health records (EHR) that patients are receiving quality care (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], n.d.). This paper will define and discuss the importance and implications of meaningful use relating to healthcare. Several key points will be discussed including an overview of meaningful use, analysis, further recommendations and a conclusion.

Meaningful Use – the incentive program with the intention of helping physicians provide better care to their patients through financial rewards and punishments. Those Eligible professionals (EPs) who choose not to demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs) are about to face a 1% penalty in their Medicare reimbursements. These penalties will increase by 1% each year until 2019 when they finally cap-off at 5%. And just to make it that much more aggravating, EPs won’t get away with a one-time demonstration, they must continue to demonstrate meaningful use each and every year through 2019 to avoid these penalties.

Meaningful Use (MU) is a specific type of incentive program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This incentive program is used to encourage the implementation of Health Information Technology (HIT). The goal is to offset financial burdens to Eligible Professional’s (EP) implementing an EHR. Thus, ensuring HIT, in the form of an EHR, continuously progresses the ARRA mandate forward. Utilization of the EHR in a meaningful way, such as health information exchange allows for improved quality of patient care. MU Clinical Quality Measures (CQM) requires qualitative data collection. Thus, allowing a consistent data collection process for analyzing and determining compliance rates, per measure. Capturing the CQM lends many nurses