The proposed H.R. 408 Spending Reduction Act of 2011 was recently introduced and SEC. 301. of the same proposes a rather dismal scenario for healthcare providers and related, business entities who yet haven’t upgraded themselves to the HIPPA-compliant EMR format of storing/sharing Patient Healthcare Information. This Act proposes withdrawal of unspent EMR stimulus funds. This means that all unobligated balances of EHR stimulus money introduced as a part of division A of ARRA-American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5), should be withdrawn.

SEC. 302 of this Act emphasizes upon the repeal of many provisions that were presented as a part of the EMR stimulus package. This means that all Recovery Act stimulus benefits offered through subtitles B & C of Title II & III respectively (Division B of ARRA 2009) will be withdrawn.

If this Act is enacted, the results can be rather devastating. For starters, healthcare providers that haven’t adopted EMR software would become immediately lose any chance of ever receiving EMR stimulus benefits. Secondly, healthcare providers Medicare/Medicaid health services are under a greater threat-this is because the concept of ‘meaningful use’ that forms the basis of receiving EMR incentive programs is covered under Title IV of Subtitle B. Thus, nearly $27 billion of unspent stimulus incentives can be repealed!

Why does this make ‘little sense’? This proposal was presented in the 112th Congress (2011-2012) H.R. 408. IH SEC. 301 but HITECH Act doesn’t form a part of tax provisions that are covered under ARRA. Further, H.R. 408 appears to handle HITECH Act in a rather limited (partial) manner, i.e. it focuses only upon the repeal of unspent authorized funding but doesn’t mention anything about how HITECH Act benchmarks, set as a part of Privacy Rule & Security Rule, will be adopted on a nationwide basis. There is no mention of how easier formats for HIPAA-compliant EMR software will be created in a more cost-effective manner.

Related posts:

1. EHR/EMR Hitech Act Stimulus Package
2. HHS Issues HITECH Act HIPAA Enforcement Rule
3. Benefits of President Obama’s Health-care Information System Plan

Finding your critical information online is not that hard. All you have to do is visit public records sites, and you may find some important information about yourself. If you own a property, for example, the address, the mortgage company, parcel number, the purchase price, the amount of debt for the purchase, and the taxes owed and paid on your property are all stored at the county clerk’s office.

• Your name: Directory lookup, such as anywho.com. You only need a published phone number.
• Currently owned real estate: Public records in county clerk’s office
• Current and previous addresses: Search sites, such as findsomeone.com and completedetective.com, you only need first and last name.
• Your name, date of birth, Social Security Number, address, balances, account numbers, and more: Investment accounts that are published online.
• Your name, account numbers, and address: Online banking accounts
• Civil court and criminal records: Public databases

Web sites exist where you need to pay a fee to find information about yourself. The amount of the fee is determined by the number of searches. You can search the county clerk’s office, criminal records and so on. You only need to type in your Social Security Number, date of birth, name, and street address. The site will look through public records for civil suits, bankruptcies, criminal convictions and so on. Do remember that thieves can find this information, too.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) governs public access to critical financial records, so the identity search sites are not allowed to run financial queries. The FCRA needs your permission to run a financial and credit check. You fill and sign a form to grant permission to mortgage company, a prospective employer, or car dealership to run a financial and credit check. Without this form, they cannot run a check legally.

The FCRA also demands that if derogatory information shows up in the report, you get a duplicate so you can dispute its contents.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or the HIPAA Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information, provided the first nationally-recognizable regulations for the use/disclosure of an individual’s health information. You can find out more information at What is HIPAA.

The HIPAA Privacy Rule defines the standards that are required to followed to become HIPAA-compliant but it is the HITECH Act that defines the enforcement, accountability, penalty and prosecution-related guidelines. You can find our more information and a HITECH Act Summary.

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ARRA 2009 was passed on February 17, 2009 as the part of Economic Stimulus Package. President Obama’s Health-care Information System Plan is dedicated to the cause of catalyzing the adoption of progressive health in formation technologies. ARRA is providing incentives for this purpose. Taking this cause into consideration, a scheme has been put forward for the healthcare providers under Medicare and Medicaid programs. This is only for the providers those are ready to make the transformation electronically of maintaining PHI.

The funds will be distributed according to the program.
1. Medicare Program- the beneficiary of this program is eligible in providing ambulatory medical facilities by using EHRs (Electronic Health Records). The incentive is $44,000 per physician which will be paid out over a period of five years.
2. Medicaid Program- the physicians are eligible to purchase and use qualified electronic medical records and will get incentives of up to $63,750 for the purpose. They will also help those practices which have not used EMR technologies yet. In this $21,250 will be given to every physician as an incentive to assist the purchasing ad implementing a qualified HER system.

The EHR system should be certified and can submit the information required to maintain EHR function’s integrity. Purchasing and implementing the EHR is necessary as the deadline is 2016 to be eligible for the incentives.

You can find our more information to help your evaluate EMR software and on Medical Records Scanning:

1. Five Recommendable EMR Softwares for Doctors/Clinics – a brief review of some medical records software in the market that have been able to offer competent and affordable services for small-scale or single-physician, private practices.
2. Recommendable EMR Vendors for Hospitals/Enterprise-level Healthcare Information Integration – EMR software available for hospitals and large-scale specialty clinics best suited for hospitals or those seeking an enterprise-level integration of healthcare information.

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The Department of Health and Human Services has published an interim final rule to conform the enforcement regulations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) to the HITECH Act, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act which was enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The HITECH Act privacy and security provisions became effective on Feb. 18, 2009.

HITECH is concerned with defining the requirements for being compatible with the security and privacy regulations of the Privacy Rule. HITECH also facilitates the expansion of HIPAA standards.

The interim final rule is an amendment of HIPAA’s enforcement rules relating to civil monetary penalties incorporating the HITECH Act’s categories of violations, ranges of civil money penalty amounts, and revised limitations on the Secretary’s authority to impose civil money penalties for established violations of HIPAA’s Administrative Simplification Rules. This interim final rule is effective 30 days after today.

Prior to the HITECH Act, the money penalty for HIPAA violations was not more than $100 for each violation or $25,000 for all identical violations of the same provision. A covered entity could also avoid the civil money penalty by showing that it did not know that it violated HIPAA regulations.

HITECH Act Enforcement Interim Final Rule

Section 13410(d) of the HITECH Act, which became effective on February 18, 2009, revised section 1176(a) of the Social Security Act (the Act) by establishing:

• Four categories of violations that reflect increasing levels of culpability;
• Four corresponding tiers of penalty amounts that significantly increase the minimum penalty amount for each violation; and
• A maximum penalty amount of $1.5 million for all violations of an identical provision.

It also amended section 1176(b) of the Act by:

• Striking the previous bar on the imposition of penalties if the covered entity did not know and with the exercise of reasonable diligence would not have known of the violation (such violations are now punishable under the lowest tier of penalties); and
• Providing a prohibition on the imposition of penalties for any violation that is corrected within a 30-day time period, as long as the violation was not due to willful neglect.

This interim final rule will become effective on November 30, 2009.

The HITECH Act
What is HITECH Act? The HIPAA Privacy Rule defines the regulations that are to be followed to become HIPAA-compliant but it is the HITECH Act that defines on the criticality of following these norms and elaborates on enforcement, accountability, penalty and persecution-related guidelines for those involved in sharing or accessing Protected Health Information.

You can find our more information on http://whatishipaa.org/hitech-act.php

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The benefits of a fully computerized health record system in President Elect Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan

President-elect Barack Obama recently spoke at George Mason University on the economy and his plans for it. One of his main promises was that he would take steps to computerize paper health records within a period of five years. This according to Obama would eliminate red tape while minimizing waste, medical errors and the repetition of costly medical tests. This is certainly a good move, but what are the challenges and obstacles faced by this initiative? What are the benefits that would be gained through this venture?

Challenges and obstacles

There are many challenges and obstacles in the way of fully computerizing health-care information systems throughout USA. These are

1] High Costs – According to estimates by Harvard and other organizations, the initiative could cost up to 100 billion dollars over the expected 10 year implementation period.

2] The need for specialized labor and effort – Setting up and maintaining an electronic health records system will be a highly technical task that will require specialized labor and skills. It would require the employment of large numbers of health information technology professionals, who unfortunately are hard to find at the moment. Because of this, many Information Technology professionals will need to be provided with specialized training for employment in the healthcare system.

3] Patient privacy concerns – Patient’s medical records need to be kept private because of their sensitive nature. A computerized health record system using EMR software raises new challenges to privacy of the records such as hackers and computer failures.

4] HIPAA compliance Issues – Many of the currently existing online health record systems do not comply with HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act], the American health privacy law.

5] The current state of medical records keeping – Only around 17% of physicians and 8% of hospitals utilize computerized health record systems at the moment. The majority still use paper record systems, hence there is much to be done in this regard.

Tremendous benefits

However, tremendous benefits are expected if the above mentioned challenges and concerns are successfully resolved. One of the main objections to Obama’s plan has been its cost. However the healthcare industry spends around $2 trillion every year whereas Obama’s plan would cost $100 billion to implement according to estimates. So it is a small amount when compared with the expected benefits that the move can bring. Moreover the computerization of the health record system can save the healthcare industry up to 300 billion dollars per year according to some expert estimates. Another benefit is that a number of new jobs will be created, as personnel will be needed to implement and maintain a computerized health record keeping system. Some estimates place the amount of jobs generated at up to 212,000. The system will standardize health record keeping and make tracking a patient’s health data across providers easier. There will also be increased savings for every US family as health care costs will be reduced.

So is this initiative a giant leap forward? Or a shot in the dark? Considering the state that the economy is, we need innovative and forward thinking plans even if they involve taking risks or overcoming many challenges. Moreover, the future is digital. Everything we have seen indicates a switch to computerized systems. Why should the system of keeping medical health records be any different? This initiative will certainly increase healthcare quality and reduce healthcare costs if all goes well.

Related posts:

1. Understanding Proposed Repeal of ARRA EMR Stimulus Package
2. Electronic Medical Records for (HIPAA) Compliance
3. EMR Meaningful Use Deadline Proposal to Extend