Free American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Essay Sample

According to Gehealthcare 2009, the office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, $31.2 shilling has been disbursed t ensure that the health care activities are amalgamated with technology. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act provisions of the Recovery Act of 2009 brought a new light and a great opportunity to improve the Americans health performance of the nation. The American health system acquired increased investment for its health information technology (HIT). The initiative of the whole program was among the health reforms that government wants to initiate in the healthy sector. It is channeled to bring about a full potential of the digital technology that will enable the sector to prevent and treat illness thus improving health. The whole insight is lead by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information and Technology (ONC).

To ensure that ONC has fulfilled its obligations under the Recovery Act, it has to act in a very fast and sensitive manner. This is because of the tight deadline that has been placed statutory requirements to ensure that this is met. They are therefore required to come with decisions that support this idea. they have to ensure that they act towards bring forth long term purposes in the improvement of health and health care  in accordance with fundamental law, through provision of the best possible application of health information technology. Therefore, to ensure that they meet the standards the American are looking for and meet the tight deadline, they have to carefully think and plan ahead of time. In pursuit of this, they have put a strategy that will ensure that they will meet the required standards in accordance with Recovery Act.

Strategic plan

American recovery and reinvestment Act and HITECH Act is out to ensure that American patient and those who take care on them benefits. The main objective of this presidential health IT initiative is to increase health IT adoption and thus utilization of electronic health records that has been given a span of five years to ensure that it comes to full utilization. This makes the concerned department have a strategic plan that will be followed in relation to the Federal Health IT strategic Plan goals. These goals are as follows.

The first one is to ensure that the health care professionals are informed critically on how they are supposed to improve the quality of healthcare delivery through error reductions thus decreasing the cost by using technology. ONC are supposed to improve the population health. They are supposed to achieve this through simplifying aggregating and analyzing anonymous health information to make public health much better and safe to all the people of America.

Privacy and security spend plan is among the goals that have been postulated in the strategic plan. In accordance to subtitle D of the Recovery Act, it ensures that competitive contracts award are utilized to ensure that the services delivered are at their best. This will be foreseen by the HHS through implementing of a time sensitive and a compulsory regulation and enforcements of the law provided in the named subtitle.

Incentives payments available for physician in the program

By being a certified user of the HER, a physician will become an eligible receiver of Medicare of incentive payment as from 2011 according to McCartney, 2009. The incentives will be calculated on the salary basis of the physician. According to the program, the first year's payment will be highest and it will be expected to lower in consecutive years for four years until 2016. Otherwise, the decrease will depend on the kind of the program.

Physician who will not be legible for the incentive will be penalized. The penalty according to Gehealthcare 2009, will be calculated as percentage of the charges that have been allowed beginning 2015 wit a 1% penalty. The penalty charge will increase steadily over the years up to 5% by 2017 and beyond. Nevertheless, Medicare incentives will not be legible to be paid to hospital based professionals. Examples of those who will not receive these incentives are emergency physicians, anesthesiologists as well as pathologist.

A meaningful user

This is a qualified certified HER. According to Gehealthcare 2009 in HITECH Act, it requires a physician to express a meaningful use of a qualified, certified HER. The definition of qualified EHR is an electronic record of health related information for individuals that include various inclusions.

One of the inclusions that were to be this record is the demographic and clinical health information. This includes medical history of the patient and the list of the problems. It also had to provide the capacity of clinical decision that it is suppose to be given. The health record information was supposed to have physician order entry support as well as ability to capture and ask relevant question concerning healthcare quality. It was required to support electronic health information transfer offering ability to integrate information from other sources.

The solutions offering these capabilities are to be provided by GE. Federal government offers mandate to GE to monitor implications brought by the program to the products and the customers. This is in the spirit of ensuring 'meaningful use 'of the program. GE will be ensuring that the deviations are suppressed and thus program response appropriately.

The eligibility of the physician in the incentive pay will depend on them having the capability of using HER in a "meaningful manner" through the following. They should ensure that they prescribe use of electronic. They should be in a position of exchanging health information especially with health information exchange and capable of giving quality reporting.

Certified EHR technology

This is EHR, which has met the standard that has been given in the HITECH Act. The Act has created HIT Standards Committee to oversee certification criteria. They will do this through developing and recognizing standards and giving recommendation to ONC to ensure that certification has been endorsed and adopted by HHS secretary through the regulation that have been put in place.

HHS and ONC will also determine the existence of Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) and Health Care Information Technology Standard Panel (HITSP), which will be used to harmonize EHRs standards. Nevertheless, the functions of the above named bodies and their operations will change depending with provisions of the stimulus bill.

Conclusion

American recovery and reinvestment Act and HITECH Act of 2009 that has otherwise been called "economic Stimulus Package" has been brought forward to create and expand the current U.S healthcare IT infrastructure. They are out to ensure that they promote electronic data exchange in the healthcare setting. They are also out to ensure that there has an increased adoption of EHR to about 90% for the physician and 70% for the hospital by 2019. This is program is projected to start from 2009 and spending to increase steadily to 2010 and 2011.

According to the technology and the demand for fast health dispensation to give room to offer health to ever-growing population, the program is seen as a positive measure by the government. Through the incentives that will be offered, there will be also increased in the productivity in offering healthcare. This measure has been hailed by many people as it caters for people from all divide. From the rich to the poor, they are in a position to meet their medical needs through this "economic Stimulus Package".

 

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