Health Information Exchange: Benefits and Concerns Essay

wellness Information Exchange is the electronic transmission veer from unrivaled wellness vexation professional to another. Health Information Exchange allows wellness make do professionals and unhurried of ofs to appropriately rag and securely sh ar patients checkup selective selective teaching electronically. Our industry is been working hard in the march and drawment of this new process, for the benefit of the patient and wellnessc be professionals. somewhat separates with access to HIE ar physicians, nurses, pharmacists, checkup assistants, aesculapian biller and coders and so forth. It is important to kick in an understanding about different wellness c are professionals having access to the patient medical examination record. HIE benefits intromitProvides improvement for quality and safety of patient care by reducing prescription and medical errors. The education and taste to patients involvement in their own wellness care. Increases efficiency by eli minating extra paperwork.Provides caregivers with clinical decision support tools for to a greater extent effective care and treatment. Eliminates plain or unnecessary testing.Improves public wellness reporting and superviseing.Creates a say-so loop for feedback between wellness-related research and actual approach pattern. Facilitates efficient deployment of emerging engineering science and wellness care services. Provides the backb unmatched of skilful infrastructure for l invariablyage by national and State-level initiatives. Provides a basic level of interoperability among electronic health records (EHRs) maintain by individual physicians and organizations. Reduces health related costs(The benefits & risks of health discipline exchange & health reading engineering science. (n.d.). The first step in EHR death penalty is to lead an assessment of your current formula and its terminals, take ins, and financial and technical readiness. Your convention stick out des ign an implementation plan that meets the specific needs of your answer. worthy health care professionals and eligible hospitals must practise certified EHR technology in order to achieve meaningful rehearse and qualify for bonus payments. It is important in an EHR when working in the implementation process to involve, training, sneer go-live, and pilot testing for system improvement. (HIE benefits) The final phase of EHR implementation includes successfully attesting to demonstrating meaningful using up of EHRs, and reassessing what you dedicate learned from training and everyday use of the system implementation to get across improving workflows that achieve the individual practices goals.The process and steps to follow on an HER system, most health care providers are cover entities, and thus, need HIPAA responsibilities for individually identifiable health information. Your leadership especially emphasizing the importance of protecting patient health information is vital t o your privacy and protection activities. HIPAA call fors cover providers to designate an individual for both a privacy and a aegis officer on their cater and delegate the responsibility of security system in a practice. Documentation shows why and where you have security measures 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 serve advises all providers that attest for the EHR incentive classs to maintain all relevant records that support attestation.These records leave behind be essential if you ever are audited for respect with HIPAA or an EHR incentive program. (Anthony, R. (2013, family line 19). Cms and ehealth.) Risk comp depot Plan compares your current security measures to what is legally andpragmatically required to sentry duty patient health information. The risk analysis identifies high priority threats and vulnerabilities on EHR. You or a security risk professional hatful conduct your practices risk analysis, alone you either way you provide want to know what to expect.Often, basic security measures whoremaster be highly effective and affordable. Using your risk analysis results, discuss and develop an work plan to mitigate the place risks. The plan should have five components administrative, physical, and technical safeguards policies and procedures and organizational standards. (Health information exchange Is your privacy protected?. (2012, July) Every practice should develop a Risk Management Plan. It is the practice responsibility to develop written and streetwise policies and procedures about how your practice protects e-PHI. All these records should be carry on all outdated policies and procedures for future audits on your practice. For the security of patient health information (PHI), your workforce must know how to implement your policies, procedures, and security audits. HIPAA requires you as a covered provid er to train your workforce on policies and procedures.Also, your staff must receive formal training on outrage notification. (Health information exchange Is your privacy protected? (2012, July) Your patients may be come to 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 covert & Security Resources section. Do not register and attest for an EHR Incentive program until you have 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 patient health information and opposition your HIPAA privacy a nd 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 Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The solitude Rule 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 nears to understand and control how their health information is used. Within HHS, the mogul for Civil Rights (OCR) has responsibility for implementing and enforcing the Privacy Rule with respect to voluntary compliance activities and civil money penalties. HITECHThe Health Information Technology for Economic and clinical Health (HITECH) Act, enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, was gestural 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 with(predicate) several provisions that tone up the civil and criminal 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 realize that the technical standards and specifications are in place to support this technology is as well critical to the development and success of a fully functional nationally health IT ecosystem. Some of the Risks of HIE include identity operator TheftAlthough health information benefits from all the security measures developed in other sparing areas such as defense and finance, it has the same risks these other areas have experienced. Identity theft can o ccur with both paper files and electronic files, still a breach of electronic files may affect more records than a breach of paper files. ErrorsJust the likes of a paper health record, if the health care provider does not enter the correct information, that information remains in the health record until it is corrected. Electronic information can provide checks and balances thatpaper health records cannot. HackersElectronic health care information benefits from the security measure developed by other industries. Health care is the last frontier of information technology, so anti-hacking security measures from other stinting areas are already used. However, hackers will continue to try to break security codes unspoilt like they do in other electronic systems. encodingCovered entities must encrypt protected health information when it is a reasonable and appropriate safeguard. When the HIPAA Security Rule was implemented in 2002, encoding was high in cost and challenging to use. Th e result is that many covered entities still do not encrypt their info. With the enormous amount of in the flesh(predicate) medical information that will be moving around electronically as HIE croaks underway and spreads, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) needs to make encryption a requirement and set standards for its use in all practices. Personal mobile devicesSmartphones, tablets and USB drives are ubiquitous. Health care providers often use their own unsecured devices to record and transmit unencrypted work-related health information. The speed with which such devices have been adopted is well ahead of policies that place their use. According to a number of recent studies, the vulnerability of mobile devices is already playing a significant role in medical information breaches. The cloudThat is, remote servers where more and more communication channeles are moving their datawill be essential in an era of electronic health information exchange, if for no other reason than the staggering quantities of data that digitizing the medical records of the entire U.S. population will create. Health care providers may overly 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 forced to rely on the security practices of others toprotect the privacy of your information.The Privacy Rule gives you, with few exceptions, the upright to inspect, review, and receive a copy of your medical records and billing 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 anothe r 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 deal 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 billing records. The Privacy Rule likewise does not permit the provider to make most disclosures of psychotherapy notes about you without your authorization. Because HIEs primary coil purpose is to improve the quality of medical care, your health care providers priorities are to gain and allow access to a comprehensive record of your medical history.When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalizes its explanation of disclosures rule, providers that maintain EHRs will have to account to you for all disclosures of your person al health information that it makes for purposes of treatment, payment, and business operations for three years prior to the date of your request. (Health information exchange brief 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 situate should be able to give youor will soon be able to give youwhats called a Continuity of Care translate (CCR) after each v isit. 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 instrumental for you, and can alsoprovide a current snapshot of your medical status for the next doctor you visit. A CCR may be catching either on paper or electronically. HIE is a abominable tool to utilize in the healthcare industry. However, different challenges still quick now days. Effective and Affordable Technology is a big yield 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 fork out in cost of information transmission and are always feeling for inexpensive vendors. Practices are also working on overcoming these obstacles, but are very hard to overcome. HIEs can support care management by making it possible to generate patient reports for use at the channelize of care. It may also be easier to identify patients who are not sideline 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 saw 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. one time electronic medical records are available everywhere, for all patients, though, it is inevitable that more people 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 planning and implementation within health care organizations. We must agree as HIM professionals providing the best of our knowledge to contribute in this process. Also we need to follow HIPPA policies and procedur es 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 heighten 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 ehea lth. 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