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EHR Regulations

‘Meaningful use’ is a concept contained in HITECH Act which was passed by Congress
with the goal of providing incentives to healthcare facilities to adopt Electronic Health Records
(EHR) use in their facilities. According to ‘meaningful use’ requirements, for healthcare facilities
to receive incentives under the HITECH Act they need to not just adopt EHR but also use the
technology in a manner that leads to significant improvement in both healthcare processes and
patient outcomes (Blumenthal & Tavenner, 2010). ‘Meaningful use’ also applies to Recovery
Audit Contractors (RAC) program. This program was created by Congress to help identify
payments by Medicaid and Medicare that are improper (American Medical Association, 2017).
To get ‘meaningful use’ incentives provided by HITECH Act, healthcare facilities have to
meet certain thresholds established through various regulations. These regulations include
adoption of basic EHR functions that support effectiveness and efficiency of a healthcare
facility’s services. Among these regulations are electronic entry of data, safe sharing of patient
data to authorized persons, and use of patient data in making clinical decisions (Blumenthal &
Tavenner, 2010).
The purpose of these regulations is to encourage hospitals to adopt EHR in a manner that
actually improves patient outcomes and hospital processes (Blumenthal & Tavenner, 2010).
While I believe that these regulations have the potential of speeding up EHR adoption, I think
that they are too ambitious and do not take into full account the real world challenges that
healthcare facilities encounter when adopting EHR. Thus, I do not think that they will be fully
effective in encouraging healthcare facilities to adopt EHR.

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In conclusion, there is no doubt that adoption of EHR will significantly improve
healthcare decision making and patient outcomes. It is also true incentives for EHR use are
needed to speed up its adoption. To this end, however, there is need to have regulations that are
achievable by a large number of healthcare facilities.

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References

American Medical Association (AMA) (2017). Recovery Auditors/ RACs. Retrieved on 10 th
October, 2019 on
https://web.archive.org/web/20150621214549/http://www.ama-
assn.org:80/ama/pub/physician-resources/solutions-managing-your-practice/coding-
billing-insurance/medicare/recovery-audit-contractors.page
Blumenthal, D., & Tavenner, M. (2010). The “meaningful use” regulation for electronic health
records. New England Journal of Medicine, 363(6), 501-504.