Tomes Jonathan P
Tomes & Dvorak, Kansas City, USA.
J Health Care Finance. 2010 Fall;37(1):91-100.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, often called the Stimulus Package or the Stimulus Bill, contains a section called the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act). The HITECH Act made several significant changes to the current HIPAA Security and Privacy Rules and provided funds and incentives to increase the use of electronic health records (EHRs) by eligible physicians and eligible hospitals, as discussed below. The HITECH Act also provides funding for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, which oversees technology standards, implementation strategies, and impact assessment. The goals of the Office of National Coordinator are to achieve use of an EHR for each person in the country by 2014 and to develop a nationwide health information technology infrastructure in support of the first goal. Further, the HITECH Act provides funding for establishing at least 70 regional centers to help promote the adoption of EHRs. These centers are to offer technical assistance, guidance, and information on best practices to help providers achieve meaningful use of EHRs. This article will define the EHR, discuss the HITECH Act EHR stimulus, and explain the problem with the HITECH Act EHR incentive time-frame.
2009年的《美国复苏与再投资法案》，通常被称为“经济刺激计划”或“经济刺激法案”，其中包含一个名为《健康信息技术促进经济和临床健康法案》（HITECH法案）的部分。HITECH法案对现行的《健康保险流通与责任法案》（HIPAA）的安全和隐私规则做出了几项重大修改，并提供资金和激励措施，以增加合格医生和合格医院对电子健康记录（EHR）的使用，如下所述。HITECH法案还为国家卫生信息技术协调办公室提供资金，该办公室负责监督技术标准、实施策略和影响评估。国家协调办公室的目标是到2014年实现全国每个人都使用电子健康记录，并建立一个全国性的卫生信息技术基础设施以支持第一个目标。此外，HITECH法案为建立至少70个区域中心提供资金，以帮助促进电子健康记录的采用。这些中心将提供技术援助、指导以及关于最佳实践的信息，以帮助医疗服务提供者实现对电子健康记录的有效使用。本文将定义电子健康记录，讨论HITECH法案中的电子健康记录激励措施，并解释HITECH法案中电子健康记录激励时间框架存在的问题。
