*Please cite scholarly sources and the Bible
*APA format
INITIAL POST 600 WORDS- Although health IT governance is a relatively new concept, the demands for this expertise are vast and the needs are immediate. Healthcare reform is one example. How is health IT governance being used to ensure that the requirements of the Affordable Care Act are being met, implemented, monitored, and maintained?
For your replies, respond to 2 classmates, identifying at least 1 strength and 1 weakness in each classmates reasoning.
RESPOND TO CLASSMATE #1 IN 455 WORDS
Government oversight of healthcare information technology will be a definite outcome. There is a sharp increase in the way consumers approach accessing healthcare information. National surveys have show that 30% of medical facilities offered applications to patients. Among those apps, 73% allowed patients to access an electronic patient portal from a mobile device (Wilson, 2015). Patient data needs to be kept safe and secure. One of the biggest challenges facing healthcare IT is the concept of standardization. Political agendas have played an important role in shaping U.S. healthcare delivery. In 2004, President George W. Bush created the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) to oversee implementation of a nationwide health IT overhaul (Braunstein, 2014, p. 31). President Barrack Obama transformed the volume of healthcare delivery with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2008 which increased the number of insured Americans. The sudden rise in insured patients led to the need for amplified health IT oversight. The Health Information Technology for Economic Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009 set incentives for the adoption of electronic health records (EHR) with the goal of modernizing the IT infrastructure of the United States healthcare system (Nelson and Staggers, 2018, p. 6). Adoption of health IT has been accelerated by the meaningful use incentive program (Jones, Rudin, Perry, & Shekelle, 2014). The federal government has been hard at work to promote change before the healthcare system fail to meet the needs of patients. Monitoring compliance, reinforcing or updating policies, and keeping the population informed are all tasks which the United States must undertake.
Mandated change, found within numerous pieces of legislation, must be monitored to ensure compliance. Utilization of health IT has only been increased with recent federal standards. More participants mean that there is more reason to ensure healthcare facilities are cooperating. The ONC oversees reporting meaningful use statistics. Facilities that are recipients of Medicare and Medicaid funds are required to submit progress towards health IT objectives. These are often submitted electronically to allow for convenient aggregation. Researchers commonly refer to these documents as surveys. Data on medical facilities includes demographics. For example, the number of medical facilities using EHR information technology increased from 8 million reported to 31 million between 2008 and 2013 (Ford, Hesse, & Huerta, 2016). Results like these are of interest because they show the integration of health IT systems requires data collected by monitoring software (also a health IT system). Gathering data is a strategy also found within Biblical text:
The Lord spoke to Moses in the tent of meeting in the Desert of Sinaion the first day of the second month of the second year after the Israelites came out of Egypt. He said: Take a census of the whole Israelite community by their clans and families, listing every man by name, one by one. You and Aaron are to count according to their divisions all the men in Israel who are twenty years old or more and able to serve in the army. One man from each tribe, each of them the head of his family, is to help you (Numbers 1:1-4 New International Version).
Moses was asked to record exact demographics among the Israelites. Health IT follows this example by collecting massive amounts of data on several relevant topics. The government refers to these reports regularly to ensure compliance. The government also works to update health IT infrastructure for future data accommodations (Rondon, Silva, & Esade, 2015).
Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) are those which provide medical services to underserved or vulnerable populations. These centers have great potential to benefit patient health. FQHCs can serve as a control environment to showcase implementation benefits of health IT. These centers show that integration of health IT has had a positive effect on the quality of patient care (Frimpong, Jackson, Stewart, Singh, Rivers, & Bae, 2013). The government monitors these facilities software by utilizing data collection tools. The organization can then data mine for any points of interest. This tactic is common among private healthcare facilities as well. Hospitals often use internal EHR data to better tailor patient care or predict future visits (Graham, Bond, Quinn, & Mulyenna, 2018). Data collection provides powerful insights. More and more technologies are being developed to facilitate the collection, interpretation, and distribution of information. The federal government will continue to require a comprehensive monitoring of healthcare data to ensure that provisions are met.
References
Braunstein, M. L. (2014). Contemporary Health Informatics. Chicago, IL: American Health Information Management Association.
Ford, E. W., Hesse, B. W., & Huerta, T. R. (2016). Personal health record use in the united states: Forecasting future adoption levels. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 18(3), e73. doi:10.2196/jmir.4973
Frimpong, J. A., Jackson, B. E., Stewart, L. M., Singh, K. P., Rivers, P. A., & Bae, S. (2013). Health information technology capacity at federally qualified health centers: A mechanism for improving quality of care. BMC Health Services Research, 13(1), 35. doi:10.1186/1472-6963-13-35
Graham, B., Bond, R., Quinn, M., & Mulvenna, M. (2018). Using data mining to predict hospital admissions from the emergency department. IEEE Access, 6, 10458-10469. doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2808843
Jones, S. S., Rudin, R. S., Perry, T., & Shekelle, P. G. (2014). Health information technology: An updated systematic review with a focus on meaningful use. Annals of Internal Medicine, 160(1), 48. doi:10.7326/M13-1531
Nelson, R., & Staggers, N. (2018). Health Informatics: An Interprofessional Approach (Second ed. pp.443). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.
Rodon, J., Silva, L., ESADE, U. R. L., & University of Houston. (2015). Exploring the formation of a healthcare information infrastructure: Hierarchy or meshwork? Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 16(5), 394-417. doi:10.17705/1jais.00395
Wilson, L. (2015). The world of apps in health care. AJN, American Journal of Nursing, 115(11), 18-19. doi:10.1097/01.NAJ.0000473308.87077.4b
RESPOND TO CLASSMATE #2 IN 455 WORDS
In recent years, the implementation of health information technology (HIT) throughout healthcare facilities has had a tremendous effect on how healthcare facilities operate and offer services/care to patients. With the use of HIT throughout these institutions, the introduction of technology has assisted in the implementation and maintenance of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Health information technology was first integrated with large organizations due to their high volume of patients, providers, and services. As time progressed HITs began emerging in smaller practices attempting to offer the same benefits that were seen from its implementation in the larger organizations (Blumenthal, Buntin, Burke, & Hoaglin, 2011). As health IT becomes more prevalent within the different health organizations, HIT has been used to assist in the promotion of the Affordable Care Act. The ACA was implemented to, focus care around exceptional patient experience and shared clinical outcome goals, redesigning of care to include a team of non-physician providers (nurse practitioners, physicians assistants, care coordinators, and dietitians), and to expand the use of electronic health records (DeParle, Emmanuel, & Kocher, 2010). Its creation was meant to assist in providing health care to all individuals while not being concerned with the cost of the care. There were some barriers presented when trying to implement the ACA, but overall as time passed it slowly has begun to do what the ACA was intended for. The ACA and health information technology provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act remove many barriers to delivering high-quality care, such as unnecessary administrative complexity, inaccessible clinical data, and insufficient access to primary care and allied health providers (DeParle, Emmanuel, & Kocher, 2010). As health information technology is being implemented, it is assisting in the acceptance and progress of the Affordable Care Act, helping offer better quality care, more efficient care, and accessible care to more patients. There was once a time when just the accessibility of care was an issue, but HITs have helped with this problem.
Building on that effort, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 underscored the importance of health IT in achieving goals related to health care quality and efficiency (Blumenthal, Buntin, Burke, & Hoaglin, 2011). There are many benefits that come from the use of an HIT such as improvement in health, provider performance, improved quality, cost savings, and greater patient engagement by patients, which are all goals similar to those of the Affordable Care Act. With the ACA and HITs overlapping aims, both have supported one another in achieving their desired goals. The Affordable Care Act helps assist with financial barriers, better quality of care, and patient experience improvement. Health information technology encouraged more use of EHR systems enhancing communication within the facilities, assisting in the efficiency of care, and improving the quality of care (Goldzweig, Towfigh, & Shekelle, 2009). The EHRs have helped cement the desires and goals of the Affordable Care Act, illustrating the importance of HITs implementation and how their use has produced successful results from the Affordable Care Act. The ACA is important and has been able to change the type of care delivered to the individuals of the U.S. This act helped to remove financial barriers, closing the doughnut hole for Medicare beneficiaries over the next decade, and decreasing medication adherence (DeParle, Emmanuel, & Kocher, 2010). The Affordable Care Act has changed the future of healthcare, providing quality and efficient care. It was not widely accepted in the beginning and still receives some pushback now, but the integration of health information technology (HIT) has assisted in the progression of the Act offering benefits to the U.S. The end goal of both the ACA and HIT is to produce the best form of care to all those in need and as time goes on this goal becomes more achievable. Be always humble, gentle, and patient (Ephesians 4:2). When trying to change the norm it is important to remain patient because change occurs at different times and speeds, depending on circumstance.
References:
Blumenthal, D., Buntin, M. B., Burke, M. F., & Hoaglin, M. C. (2011). The benefits of health information technology: A review of the recent literature shows predominantly positive results. Health Affairs, 30 (3). https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff .
DeParle, N. A., Emanuel, E. J., & Kocher, R. (2010). The affordable care act and the future of clinical medicine: The opportunities and challenges. Annals of Internal Medicine, 153 (8), 536-539. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-153-8-201010190-00274
Goldzweig, C. L., Maglione, M., Shekelle, P. G., & Towfigh, A. (2009). Costs and benefits of health information technology: New trends from the literature. Health Affairs, 28 (2).
https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.28.2.w282
Nelson, R., & Staggers, N. (2018). Health Informatics: An interprofessional approach (2nd ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.
