EMR Implementation & HITECH Act Blog

Welcome to a New EMR Blog for Health Care Professionals

Starting in the 4th century B.C., when Hippocrates first uttered the words “Primum Non Nocere” and continuing through February 2009, when President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, there have been rules and regulations governing the practice of medicine.

Some rules, such as that famous dictum “first do no harm”, are easy to understand.  Others, such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) are not.

If you are responsible for your organization’s medical records, you are bombarded with an alphabet soup of acronyms including NHIN, ONCHIT, EMR, HIT, HITECH, and RHIO. You know that there are important decisions to be made and that much is at stake.

Welcome to PC Healthstop’s EMR Implementation and HITECH Act blog, a place you can go to sort it all out.

We’ll help guide you through the maze of important new organizations, including those that are just now coming into existence. We’ll also help you understand what the new rules will mean to you, and suggest strategies to help you not only comply with them, but use them to improve both your patients’ medical health and your organization’s bottom line.

Many aspects of health information technology are still in flux. Decisions about “meaningful use” and what constitutes an electronic medical record have not yet been made. Count on us to bring you the story when they are.

While 2011, the first year for which incentives will be paid seems like a long way off, you have a lot to do before you can meaningfully implement a health information system. Until all the standards have been written and the enabling legislation has been passed, it’s hard to know the right thing to do. We’ll help you track new developments as they happen.

Need to know how to qualify for the incentives being offered for early compliance? Want to know which products will be certified for use in creating electronic health records? Looking for the “big picture” from people who are directly involved in the creation of this new national network for the exchange of health information?  We’ll be your partner in gathering and understanding all of this and more.

We hope you’ll become a regular visitor to PC Healthstop. Our writers are constantly posting new and timely articles about the latest developments in this unfolding story. Visit us. Read what we have to say. Tell us what you think and when you’d like to know more. We look forward to hearing from you.

The PC Healthstop Blogging Team

Posted by PC Healthstop Blogging Team