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The HITECH Act was enacted in 2009 to encourage medical practices to adopt and better use electronic health records (EHR) by 2019. It provided incentives for practices to make “meaningful use” of certified EHR systems, with fines for those who did not comply. The act cost an estimated $19 billion, with $17 billion set aside for incentives. The act also established Regional Extension Centers (RECs) to help practices meet criteria for incentives. The act aimed to bring medical records into the technological realm of the 21st century, improving the medical process and making it more effective.
The HITECH Act, short for Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health, was enacted by the US Congress in 2009 as part of the larger American Recovery and Investment Act. It provided funds and an updated policy to encourage medical practices to adopt and better use electronic health records (EHR) by the year 2019. The HITECH Act also serves as an addendum to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) passed in 1996, granting the Department of Health and Human Services ( HHS) of the United States broader jurisdiction to sanction medical practices for the insecure handling of personal health information (PHI).
Through the HITECH Act, the government has offered incentives for physician offices to convert more data into EHR systems. Overall, the act cost an estimated US$19 billion (USD), of which $17 billion was set aside as an incentive for practices to make “meaningful use” of certified EHR systems. The incentive programs were to run from 2011 to 2015.
As of 2011, medical practices that met certain EHR criteria could qualify for up to $107,750 USD in a five-year period; this amount represented $44,000 USD from Medicare and $63,750 USD from Medicaid. Regional Extension Centers (RECs) have been established across the country to help local practices better understand the HITECH Act and to help the medical community meet criteria to receive incentives.
Under the HITECH Act, rewards for significant use of EHR systems would expire after 2015, after which a more negative incentive would apply: fines for unresponsible and safe use of EHR systems. Fines had already been in place under HIPAA since 1996, but the government has been trying to up the ante. After passage of the HITECH Act, a hospital or doctor’s office that was not making significant use of EHR systems could be fined by HHS. HHS could also fine practices for unprotected PHI, meaning any patient’s private information that isn’t held in an EHR system that meets government encryption and security standards.
The HITECH Act was the US government’s most concerted effort to fully bring medical records into the technological realm of the 21st century. The government had deemed that too few medical providers had implemented EHR systems. Instead, practices were felt to rely too heavily on outdated, paper-based filing systems. Those archaic systems forced patients and providers to sift through reams of redundant and superfluous documents that slowed down the medical process and made it less effective. It also allowed for more room for error, with a higher chance of outdated, incomplete, or mismatched patient files.
Outdated technologies, it was argued, ended up costing more time and money to manage than EHR databases. They have also made it more difficult for patients to access necessary records and transfer them from one facility to another. An example of how EHRs would improve the new system would be when a patient visits a new doctor. Rather than having the patient fill out another long form of medical history, the physician could simply retrieve that patient’s EHR, quickly evaluate that patient’s history, and be able to address that patient’s medical needs more confidently and more quickly. individual.
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