Health Information Exchange: Benefits and Concerns Essay

wellness instruction Exchange is the electronic transmission placement mass meeting from one wellness vexation professional to an otherwise. Health Information Exchange allows wellness c atomic number 18 professionals and affected roles to appropriately admittance and securely dispense long-sufferings checkup examination info electronically. Our industry is been running(a) operose in the process and development of this new process, for the benefit of the patient and healthcare professionals. Some individuals with rile to hurry are physicians, nurses, pharmacists, medical assistants, medical biller and coders and so forth. It is important to defecate an empathizeing close different health care professionals having access to the patient medical record. HIE benefits includeProvides mendment for timber and safety of patient care by reducing prescription and medical errors. The education and orientation to patients involvement in their own health care. Increase s capacity by eliminating unnecessary musical compositionwork.Provides caregivers with clinical decision concord motherfuckers for more legal care and treatment. Eliminates redundant or unnecessary testing.Improves public health reporting and monitoring.Creates a potential loop for giftd back up between health-related look and actual practice. Facilitates expeditious deployment of emerging applied science and health care services. Provides the backbone of technical home for leverage by national and State-level initiatives. Provides a prefatorial level of interoperability among electronic health records (EHRs) maintained by individual physicians and organizations. Reduces health related cost(The benefits & take a chances of health info exchange & health schooling technology. (n.d.). The first step in EHR implementation is to conduct an assessment of your new practice and its coatings, require, and financial and technical readiness. Your practice sack design an implementation curriculum that meets the specific needs of your practice. Eligible health care professionals and desir adequate hospitals mustiness use certified EHR technology in order to procure meaningful use and qualify for incentive payments. It is important in an EHR when working in the implementation process to involve, training, mock go-live, and pilot testing for system improvement. (HIE benefits) The final phase of EHR implementation includes successfully shewing to demonstrating meaningful use of EHRs, and reassessing what you cook learned from training and e realday use of the system implementation to get across improving workflows that achieve the individual practices goals.The process and move to determine on an HER system, most health care leave behindrs are cover entities, and thus, need HIPAA responsibilities for individually identifiable health discipline. Your leadership especially emphasise the importance of cling toing patient health learning i s vital to your silence and pledge activities. HIPAA requires cover providers to designate an individual for both a hiding and a earnest officer on their staff and delegate the responsibleness of pledge system in a practice. enumerationation shows why and where you seduce security touchstones in place, how you created them, and what you do to monitor them. Create a paper or electronic folder for your practice medical records. The Center of Medicare operate advises all providers that attest for the EHR incentive programs to retain all relevant records that support attestation.These records testament be essential if you ever are audited for compliance with HIPAA or an EHR incentive program. (Anthony, R. (2013, September 19). Cms and ehealth.) attempt Analysis Plan compares your current security measures to what is legally and pragmatically required to safeguard patient health info. The try analysis identifies mettlesome priority threats and vulnerabilities on EHR. You or a security danger professional brush aside conduct your practices risk analysis, but you either way you will lack to k outright what to expect.Often, basic security measures can be highly effective and affordable. Using your risk analysis results, discuss and develop an action course of study to mitigate the determine risks. The plan should support five components administrative, physical, and technical safeguards policies and procedures and organizational standards. (Health information exchange Is your silence protected?. (2012, July) Every practice should develop a Risk Management Plan. It is the practice function to develop written and up-to-date policies and procedures astir(predicate) how your practice protects e-PHI. All these records should be retained on all over-the-hill policies and procedures for future audits on your practice. For the security of patient health information (PHI), your hands must know how to implement your policies, procedures, and secu rity audits. HIPAA requires you as a covered provider to train your workforce on policies and procedures.Also, your staff must draw formal training on rape notification. (Health information exchange Is your privacy protected? (2012, July) Your patients whitethorn be concerned about confidentiality and security of health information on an EHR. Emphasize the benefits of EHRs to them as patients, perhaps using patient education materials available in the secrecy & Security Resources section. Do not register and attest for an EHR Incentive program until you earn conducted your security risk analysis (or reassessment) and corrected any deficiencies identified during the risk analysis. Document these changes/corrections. Providers participating in the EHR Incentive Program can be audited. When you attest to meaningful use, it is a legal statement that you have met specific standards, including that you protect ePHI. Work with your EHR vendor(s) to let them know that protecting pati ent health information and meeting your HIPAA privacy and security responsibilities regarding electronic health information in your EHR is one of your major goals. Involve your practice staff and any other partners that you have to help streamline this process. HIPAA privacy regulationsHealth Insurance Portability and answerableness Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The Privacy rein in standards address the use and disclosure of individuals health informationcalled protected health information by organizations subject to the Privacy Rule called covered entities, as well as standards for individuals privacy rights to understand and control how their health information is used. Within HHS, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has responsibility for implementing and enforcing the Privacy Rule with respect to voluntary compliance activities and civil funds penalties. HITECHThe Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, enacted as part of the American Recovery and R einvestment Act of 2009, was signed into law on February 17, 2009, to promote the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology. subtitle D of the HITECH Act addresses the privacy and security concerns associated with the electronic transmission of health information, in part, through several provisions that strengthen the civil and wicked enforcement of the HIPAA rules. Standards & InteroperabilityThe work promoting the adoption and uptake of health information technology is the key to ensuring the goals of the HITECH Act. But work being done to ensure that the technical standards and specifications are in place to support this technology is similarly sarcastic to the development and success of a fully functional nationwide health IT ecosystem. Some of the Risks of HIE includeIdentity TheftAlthough health information benefits from all the security measures developed in other economic areas much(prenominal) as defense and finance, it has the same risks these o ther areas have experienced. Identity thieving can occur with both paper files and electronic files, but a breach of electronic files may affect more records than a breach of paper files. ErrorsJust like a paper health record, if the health care provider does not enter the correct information, that information carcass in the health record until it is corrected. Electronic information can provide checks and balances that paper health records cannot. HackersElectronic health care information benefits from the security measure developed by other industries. Health care is the nett frontier of information technology, so anti-hacking security measures from other economic areas are already used. However, hackers will continue to try to break security codes effective like they do in other electronic systems. Encryptioncover entities must encrypt protected health information when it is a sane and appropriate safeguard. When the HIPAA Security Rule was implemented in 2002, encrypti on was high in cost and challenging to use. The result is that many covered entities hushed do not encrypt their data. With the enormous amount of personal medical information that will be moving around electronically as HIE gets underway and spreads, the U.S. section of Health and Human Services (HHS) needs to come to encryption a requirement and set standards for its use in all practices. Personal mobile devicesSmartphones, tablets and USB drives are ubiquitous. Health care providers very much use their own unsecured devices to record and transmit unencrypted work-related health information. The stimulate with which such devices have been adopted is well ahead of policies that govern their use. fit to a number of recent studies, the vulnerability of mobile devices is already performing a significant role in medical data breaches. The demoralizeThat is, remote servers where more and more businesses are moving their datawill be essential in an era of electronic health informa tion exchange, if for no other reason than the staggering quantities of data that digitizing the medical records of the full U.S. population will create. Health care providers may also want to host their patient portals on cloud-based servers. Patient portals are websites where patients can access their medical records and exchange email with their providers. Cloud services are developing more quickly than laws or regulations can address. As a patient youre unlikely to know where your medical records actually reside. And youre labored to rely on the security practices of others to protect the privacy of your information.The Privacy Rule gives you, with few exceptions, the right to inspect, review, and receive a copy of your medical records and cathexis records that are held by health plans and health care providers covered by the Privacy Rule. Only you or your personal representative has the right to access your records. A health care provider or health plan may send copies of your records to another provider or health plan as needed for treatment or payment or as authorized by you. However, the Privacy Rule does not require the health care provider or health plan to share information with other providers or plans. You do not have the right to access a providers psychotherapy notes. Psychotherapy notes are notes taken by a mental health professional during a conversation with the patient and kept separate from the patients medical and boot records. The Privacy Rule also does not permit the provider to make most disclosures of psychotherapy notes about you without your authorization. Because HIEs firsthand answer is to improve the quality of medical care, your health care providers priorities are to increment and allow access to a comprehensive record of your medical history.When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalizes its accounting of disclosures rule, providers that maintain EHRs will have to account to you for all discl osures of your personal health information that it makes for purposes of treatment, payment, and business trading operations for three years prior to the date of your request. (Health information exchange skeleton examines privacy and security concerns. (2012, June 13). Until HHS rule is final, you can get an accounting that goes back six years prior to your request, but this DOES NOT include disclosures for treatment, payment, or business operations. Therefore the disclosures you are currently able to get may seem largely incomplete and irrelevant to the purposes for which you want them. You also have access to your own medical records (apart from psychotherapy notes about you), but you must request them directly from your providers. It is not possible to request your records through an HIE.It has to be in person from the practice you are requesting medical records from. However, your doctor should be able to give youor will soon be able to give youwhats called a Continuity of Ca re Record (CCR) afterward each visit. The CCR is a summary of the most relevant and up-to-date facts about your care and treatment with that provider. A CCR can be helpful for you, and can also provide a current snapshot of your medical place for the next doctor you visit. A CCR may be transmitted either on paper or electronically. HIE is a tremendous tool to utilize in the healthcare industry. However, different challenges still existing now days. Effective and Affordable Technology is a big issue and the primary problem. HIE required costly network, connections hardware, software and so forth. Some practices including hospitals cant afford the cost of technology.Providers are trying to save in cost of information transmission and are always looking for crummy vendors. Practices are also working on overcoming these obstacles, but are very hard to overcome. HIEs can support care management by devising it possible to generate patient reports for use at the point of care. It m ay also be easier to identify patients who are not following a prescribed care regimen or not meeting its goals, and to measure how well providers are delivering recommended care. This all goes along with the governments goal of shifting the health care payment model from one of fee for service to payment based on outcomes that is, not just whether you byword a doctor but whether you benefited from seeing her. The goals of HIE are to improve the quality of care and make delivering it more efficient and cost-effective. Once electronic medical records are available everywhere, for all patients, though, it is inevitable that more throng will want access to this data. It is a goldmine for medical research and all kinds of statistical analysis, for example. ConclusionHIE will continue providing grooming and implementation within health care organizations. We must comply as HIM professionals providing the outflank of our knowledge to contribute in this process. Also we need to follow HIPPA policies and procedures in our place of employment and commit ourselves to meet our goal which is providing the best on patient care. The more we work as a team at the end of the road it will be easier on us to have our job done and accurate at the end of the road. Avoiding errors is also our responsibility as an HIM professionals. Lets not focus on productivity, which is important, but also lets put ourselves in the patients situation. We are also patients and we like to have things done the right way.ReferencesRhodes, H. (2013, August 05). Seven unintended consequences of electronic HIE. Retrieved from http//www.healthit.gov/policy-researchers-implementers/reports HIE benefits. (n.d.). Retrieved fromhttp//www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/health-information-exchange/hie-benefits The benefits & risks of health information exchange & health information technology. (n.d.). Retrieved from http//www.nchica.org/GetInvolved/CACHI/HIEbenefits-risks.htm Anthony, R. (2013 , September 19). Cms and ehealth. Retrieved from http//www.cms.gov/eHealth/downloads/Webinar_eHealth_September19_CMSeHealthOverview.pdf Health information exchange Is your privacy protected?. (2012, July). Retrieved from https//www.privacyrights.org/fs/fsC6/CA-medical-HIE Health information exchange brief examines privacy and security concerns. (2012, June 13). Retrieved from https//www.cdt.org/pr_statement/health-information-exchange-brief-examines-privacy-and-security-concerns