HITECH Act, Essay Example

Part I

HITECH stands for Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health, and it is a section of the United States Recovery Investment Act, which was instituted by the American Congress in the year 2009. The act needs medical establishments to embrace to the employers and employees the use of Electronic Health Records, which its deadline expires by 2019. The ACT focus on promoting health care delivery in America through exceptional investment in the sector of health information technology. The provisions of the Act are particularly structured to work in harmony in delivering health and technological support to the health providers. The Act also aims at coordinating and aligning both globally and within the state strategies that will play a major role during times of emergencies. It also aims at ensuring that the health employees are trained and retrained with relevant skills to deal with emergencies (Song, 2010).

There is a need to develop a comprehensive health information technology system that will cover the health care system. The health Information technology will enable individuals to access the health care technologies easily (Grama, 2010). The following are steps in adopting the medical information technology:

1. Completing the principles concerned with the storage and exchange of the relevant clinical and claims information.
2. Complete fielding of access between and in the internal Federal bodies having the information, leveraging the execution work in all states of the nation and the Bidirectional Health Information Exchange between various agencies in the United States.
3. There is need to develop an elaborate, inclusive, massive identity index. This will ensure that the users of the technology to access the system without any difficulty. This will make sure that the system is safe to both the users and providers (Song, 2010).
4. Developing the content and arrangement that comprises data use agreements between various agencies holding the needed information. This will ensure that there is confidentiality in the use of information in the health sector in embracing technology.
5. In promoting the use of medical information technology, there is the need to avail safeguarded and secure portal to the Federal Health Record whereby all the Americans are with certainty that they will have access to individual medical records. This in turn will increase the confidentiality of the information among the people of America in which the technology targets. This will boost the security and integrity of the technology thus will attract more users of the technology.
6. The next step in adopting the new medical technology is the is fielding a gateway to the Federal Health Record in order for the data to be employed in populating local health information exchanges, electronic health records and personal health records .
7. The new medical information system will need to be constantly being safeguarded and improved. This will boost information security of the medical information thus making the system valuable (Song, 2010).

Part II

As the Chief Executive Officer of the health care organization, there is the need to make the health care system accessible to all citizens. This means that it is important to make the services available to the clients at an affordable rate, which will be benefiting the society. The organization through my leadership will ensure that all the services are available and at an affordable rate. As the CEO, the organization will experience expansion of the hospital facilities to cater the changing trends in technology (Nozaki & Tipton, 2011). This means that the facilities in the organization should reflect the modern day technological advances. There is the need also to provide incentives to health staff in order for them to undergo training based on technological advancement (Grama, 2010. The training as the CEO of the medical organization should encompass the use of electronic health records, thus minimizing loss of important records on the medical state of the clients. As the CEO of the medical organization, I will ensure more funds from the government, donors, and other agencies are provided to expand the technological facilities in the organization. This is because facilities on the modern technology need a huge amount of finances in order to take off. There is a need to improve the security of the system in the organization to ensure that the customer’s data is secure and safe (Song, 2010).

The HITECH act has contributed immensely to the field of health care in America. The Act has promoted the use of the electronic record. This has reduced the use of paperwork style that was not secure to client’s information and was prone to loss of customers’ vital information. The new technological system has improved service delivery to their clients due to improved system of handling customers’ data. The Act has positively contributed to the element of saving time. The patients take less time to be attended because the hospitals’ database has the clients’ details hence available at the click of a mouse. The new technological advance through the HITECH Act has boosted the element of convenience because the patient can be diagnosed and given treatment easily because the data needed by the doctor is available in the computer database (Grama, 2010).

References

Grama,J. (2010). Legal Issues in Information Security. New York, NY: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Nozaki, T. & Tipton, H. (2011). Information Security Management Handbook. Cambridge: CRC Press

Song ,T. (2010). Essentials of Health Care Finance. New York, NY: Jones & Bartlett Learning.