Regional Extension Centers arose out of the challenges small providers face; lack of resources and/or expertise. Thus, the small providers fail in their efforts to optimize and improve the quality of care they provide their patients. With their essential role in the national health care delivery network, these providers serve as the home base for preventive care. The small health providers also link the wider health care system such as hospitals and specialists. To leverage local expertise, the Regional Extension Centers were designed to provide practical, tailor made support to meet the needs of the local health care providers in a way that is synergistic and non-biased with the private sectors institutions (HealthIT, 2014).
According to Hartzband,
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Achieving stage 1 meaningful use
The milestone system also ensured consistent results across RECs while encouraging creativity in the methods and means employed by a REC to best support their provider population (HealthIT, 2014).
Objectives of RECs
Under the HITECH Act of 2009, the specific objectives of the RECs are:
• Provide training and support services to assist in EHR adoption.
• Offer information and guidance with EHR implementation (but not to carry out such an implementation).
• Give other technical assistance as needed in the implementation of health IT and its proper use as a meaningful way to improve care.
• Outreach and education and EHR support (working with vendors but also help health care providers choose a certified EHR system (Hartzband, 2015).
RECs offer a wide array of valuable services, which may include:
• RECs provide a new patient-centered service line to help providers across the country adopt and implement new patient and family engagement tools strategies and tools. Health providers interested in implementing and optimizing health IT that is patient centered use available REC resources and
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This interoperability weave is crucial in facilitating communication across provider organizations involved in patient care through secure and reliable information exchange.
• RECs provide support for privacy and security of health information. Ensuring privacy and security is vital in building trust in order to realize the potential benefits of health information exchange. If there are perceived or actual risks in the accuracy and completeness of health information, individual’s willingness to disclose necessary health information may be tampered with.
• Assistance in workflow redesign and analysis
• Training in EHR: selection, implementation, support, project management and financial consultation.
• Connections to state and national health information exchange efforts
• Continuous technical assistance in implementing Health IT and using it in a meaningful way to improve care (HealthIT, 2014).
• Analysis of Meaningful Use
SS Consulting will evaluate the current operational, billing, and governance model to reform current operations in THS to reach its optimal steady state, and lead to substantial changes in the delivery of care. This allows us to analyze your operational model and can guide you to operational adjustments to increase patient flow and revenue. Our plan is based on our management methodology. Our consultants will observe patient flow, operational, and practice patterns throughout the entire ambulatory services.
Practice Fusion Electronic Health Record (EHR) System MEA-131 Ms. Slade June 17, 2016 Sharon Liles Practice Fusion Electronic Health Record (EHR) System Technology and the evolution of Electronic Health Records is an improvement to the efficiency and the effectiveness of how healthcare providers record, communicate and process patient information. According to Practice Fusion, “since 2005, the focus of Practice Fusion is expanding the ability to aggregate clinical data and share it meaningfully, by helping to make healthcare better for everyone. To improve clinical decision, support to tracking Meaningful Use, and provide insight that deliver better, safer and more efficient
Health Information Exchange Providers across the U.S. are turning to the Health Information Exchange also known as HIE. HIE provides secure online access to patients charts among a network of providers, hospitals, clinics, doctor’s offices, and pharmacies who join in the exchange, so they can have timely electronic access to records their patients will allow them to share. For patients this means having their medical records available no matter where they go and for providers it means having instant access to life saving information when seconds count
Since many health information infrastructure systems are relatively new, there is still variability in the implementation stages that different organizations have achieved. Additionally, most systems will have more than one capability that provides value, so the relationship between the system’s functionality and the resulting impact to patient care must be analyzed in order to determine the value it provides (Einstein, Juzwishin, Kushniruk, & Nahm, 2011). Value of health information infrastructures can be assessed in many different ways, including whether the technology allows the availability of useful information, how that information is utilized by staff and patients, and its impact on health outcomes. For information to be of value and influence medical decision making, it must be comprehensive, accessible, useful, and valid (Fitterer, Mettler, Rohner, & Winter, 2011).
Throughout the past decades, many acts have been passed in support of health information technology and the adaptation of such technology. Two of those acts, the HIPAA (health insurance portability and accountability) Act and the HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act, focus on protecting patient health information and utilizing health information technology. Although these acts bring about many positive changes within the healthcare industry, there are some downsides regarding the implementation of these acts, as there are with many acts that are passed. Both of these acts provide security to patient health information, however, the HITECH Act contributes more to the utilization of the electronic health
There are distinct advantage to embracing Health IT. Fully integrated EHRs enable rapid adaptation away from a volume-based care delivery model toward an alternative quality-based model. Tracking and improving quality of care with key performance indicators is essential to meet HHS and consumer expectation. Providers and clinicians participating in the CMS Shared Savings Program will find access to clinical intelligence enables efficient reporting and performance monitoring.
Electronic health records are essential in allowing physicians to monitor their patients’ health, notice trends, and potentially prevent hospital readmissions, quickly diagnose diseases, and reduce medical errors. This is the first in a series of blog posts where we ask the question “What is Meaningful Use of an EHR?” In this post, we interview a physician at a family practice to learn more about how he is meaningfully using his EHR to coordinate patient care, prevent a hospital readmission and ultimately improve patient health. On the day we spoke, Dr. Frank Maselli of Riverdale Family Practice in the Bronx had just finished seeing 30 patients.
Interestingly, the findings from the review of literature shed light to the challenges nurses encounter with the implementation of electronic health records and identify areas for improvement that could be made in an effort to achieve the goals of the HITECH act. Based on the review of literature, overall, the electronic health record is seen as a positive aspect to assisting nurses in providing positive outcomes for patients. However, challenges still exist with the daily utilization of the EHR, with communication among healthcare providers and interdisciplinary teams. These challenges present nurses with great difficulty as they attempt to provide care to their patients. Because some nurses continue to struggle with utilizing the electronic
In her assessment of the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act (ARRA), Murphy (2009) discusses how its enactment provided unprecedented funding for the advancement of health information technology (HIT) which served to promote health care reform. Electronic health records (EHRs) by extension received a boost via incentivization for appropriate use in hospitals and ambulatory settings (Murphy, 2009). The benefits of EHRs include the ability to improve the delivery and quality of nursing care, the ability to make more timely and efficient nursing care decisions for nursing, the ability to avoid errors that might harm patients and the ability to promote health and wellness for the patients (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). An appropriate use of EHR
Regulations and Implementations The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is legislation passed in 1996 that safeguards the rights of employees and their families as it relates to their health insurance coverage whenever they transition or lose employment (Health IT.gov, 2016). The law required national guidelines and standards be developed concerning electronic health care exchanges as well as identifiers being assigned to providers, health insurance benefits, and employers to be recognized nationally (Health IT.gov, 2016). The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was implemented in 2009 granting Health and Human Services (HHS) the control over creating programs to enhance efficacy, safety, and overall quality of health care via health information technology (IT) with a focus on privacy and security during electronic health data interfacing (Health IT. gov, 2016).
EHR Consultant The role of an EHR Consultant is responsible for working with practices to achieve National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) certification along with successfully developing, implementing, coordinating, facilitating and managing critical elements of the EHR project. They provide technical support for the implementation of EHR and other HIT technologies before and during implementation of health IT systems in clinical and public health setting. Some principal duties that go along with the job include: Responsible for managing all aspects of the EHR implementation.
Lastly authors Sharma and Aggarwal state that “There are four major ethical priorities for EHRS: Privacy and confidentiality, security breaches, system implementation, and data inaccuracies.” (Jamshed, Ozair, Sharma, & Aggarwal, 2015). In the future paper records will become a thing of the past thus, better training and accountability from providers is an essential part to protecting patients EHR and confidentiality. Electronic
Health Information Exchange Efforts Is Declining: In the article by Milstein, Lin, and Jha (2016), The distribution of health information exchange (HIE), in which clinical data are electronically aligned to patients in several different patient care settings, is a top priority for policy makers. Since 2006, the number of operational HIE efforts is down from 119 in 2012. Out of 119 only 50% are of operational efforts that reported financially viable, and all efforts reported a variety of barriers to persistence. Geographic Coverage and Provider Contribution:
Starting in 2009, in the result of the HITECH Act, institutions were rewarded financially for implementing these electronic health record systems into their practices, with more than $35 billion invested. According toWithin a few years, the rates of Medicare or Medicaid EHR adoption increased dramatically for physicians and hospitals. From 2010 to 2012, hospital EHR implementation rates grew to 44%, while physician EHR implementation rose from 20% to 40%, and those rates should keep rising (Cite One). The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act is mainly looked at for reduction in health disparities. One tactic being used to fight these health disparities is researching demographic data and applying this data to electronic health records.
You need a system that can keep up with this ever changing world to give the patients the best care possible. There is new procedures, information, diseases, and advances in science on a daily basis and if you don 't have a system that can keep up with all of the changes, you can waste time and money along with the loss of patients. Patients need and deserve the best care possible and it 's up to the doctors to make that happen. Organization is going to be a key component in an EHR system as you need important information and fast in some instances and if you don 't have a well-organized system, it could mean life or death, in some situations.