Challenges and Forces Driving Adoption of Health Information Technology and Electronic Healthcare Records

Challenges and Forces Driving Adoption

Of Health Information Technology and

Electronic Healthcare Records

Michael D. Paquin, FHIMSS

www.mdpgrp.com

In this segment on Electronic Healthcare records, being sponsored by Physicians Office Resource, we will look at: Electronic Medical Records and the Economic Stimulus Package: Go Digital Today or Face Penalties Tomorrow

By, Michael D Paquin

This will be a 6 part series starting July 2009

Among the many provisions in the $787 billion economic stimulus plan is one that will impact every healthcare practitioner, hospital, and institution in the United States: a $19 billion provision to implement a national Health Information Technology (HIT) system for use by doctors and hospitals.

Only 10% of hospitals and 17% of doctors currently have at least a basic electronic health record system in place, and fewer than 2% of hospitals use electronic records in all departments, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. The government's goal is to change the digital landscape over the next 5 years, ensuring security to electronic health records for all Americans by 2014. Fail to go digital by 2015, and your organization will face graduated financial penalties.

With the wholesale adoption of electronic medical records comes the need to protect patient privacy and secure healthcare data. Physicians and hospitals must act now to safeguard, encrypt, and manage the organization's electronic communications and records.

Proponents of nationwide electronic medical records believe the system will:

▪ Improve healthcare by enabling faster and easier communication of a patient's medical history, prescriptions and treatment regimen between doctors and hospitals.

▪ Allow healthcare providers to make more informed and faster decisions in patient treatment.

Opponents of the system worry that:

▪ Easier access to medical information would infringe on a patient's right to privacy.

▪ Health information would be used for sales and marketing purposes or to interfere in medical decisions made between doctors and patients.

In the issues to come  you will learn:

▪ Details of the national Health Information Technology (HIT) system, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and their effects on electronic communications and medical records.

▪ Proven compliance tips: the steps all healthcare organizations should take to protect patient information and electronic health records (EHR).

▪ Best practices to minimize risks and maximize compliance with new EHR-related privacy and security breach notification laws, as well as expanded HIPAA guidelines and penalties, and state

encryption regulations.

▪ Potentially costly risks – legal, business, and financial – facing physicians and institutions that fail to adopt and strategically manage electronic health record systems.

▪ Compliance rules and tools: how the hosted security services model fits in and what archiving, encryption, email content control, and Web security products are recommended.

▪ What your organization needs to do today to ensure that you have a safe and secure, comprehensive and compliant electronic health record system in place by 2015.