OBAMA EARMARKS HEALTHCARE IT FOR UPGRADE

By K.C.Bishoppe

President Obama is a very modern man who used the Internet and social networking sites to promote himself and get elected.

With that in mind, even as the White House and federal agencies attempt to revise and upgrade the current healthcare program, the President is emphasizing the need to control the costs of healthcare delivery by upgrading the IT infrastructure.

A month after taking office, Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 which includes $19.2 billion for HIT, healthcare information technology,.

Provisions include the establishment of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) within the Health and Human Services Department (HHS). The purpose of ONCHIT is to promote the development of a nationwide interoperable HIT infrastructure.

Also included are financial incentives through the Medicare program that will encourage physicians and hospitals to adopt and use certified electronic health records (EHR) which will make moving and tracking patient information more efficient.

Sufficient time is being allowed for records to be transformed into their electronic form. Beginning in 22019 penalties will be imposed on those who do not use EHR.

Another stipulation is the expansion if the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) which was passed to protect patient health data and under the extension will apply to covered entities and their business associates.

With the enormous amount of money that the government is pouring into healthcare, it's anticipated that the next decade will provide vendors with substantial opportunities to provide solutions for managing, connecting and securing the enormous amounts of data held within the national healthcare system.

For the first time in history the federal government is going to pay for the management of data. There are a multitude of areas that lend themselves to improvements in data and content management where electronic patient records are concerned.

Split into the two categories of EHRs which are used by healthcare providers to document and manage patient care, and PHRs or personal health records which put healthcare consumers in control of their personal medical data, the electronic records are credited with helping prevent dangerous drug interactions, identify critical lab values and do a variety of other tasks in an efficient and cost effective manner.

As the revamping of the healthcare program goes on slowly and seemingly endlessly, practitioners and consumers alike wait to see what will be done to the healthcare IT infrastructure and how rapidly changes will take place.