Health Information Improving Healthcare With Personal Health

Health Information

Improving Healthcare with Personal Health Records (PHRs)

With the inception of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2012, the United States began undertaking the most dramatic reconfiguration of its healthcare system since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. As part of an innovative strategy for improving the healthcare system's efficiency, for producing better health outcomes and for reducing wasteful spending, the Affordable Care Act has made as one of its foci the continued integration of Health Information Technology into everyday care strategies. Due substantially to technology-related initiatives subordinate to the Affordable Care Act, it is incumbent upon Health Information Systems Managers to remain abreast of and compliant with evolving laws.

Discussion:

This is an especially salient issue for Health Information Systems Managers in the face of the federal government's Readmission Reduction Initiative. Over the next several years, hospitals and other healthcare provider facilities will be required to meet standards for the reduction of 30-day readmissions for recently hospitalized patients. This is considered a leading indicator of healthcare quality in any given facility. Therefore, Medicare is now attaching readmission rates to reimbursement penalties, withholding a certain percentage of this compensation from hospitals for non-compliance.

This speaks to the role of the HIS Manager, who will work to ensure that his or her employing health facility does remain compliant. The Affordable Care Act identifies improvements in such areas as the recording, storage, maintenance and sharing of Patient Health Records. According to the CMS (2012), Personal Health Records can benefit the patient's health and improve care decisions in a number of ways. The CMS indicates that "PHRs help providers get the information they need to treat you in an emergency by quickly sharing information on your medications, allergies, and emergency contacts. You can let others have access to your PHR for just this situation."

Faster, more seamless sharing of health information is seen as an important way of promoting a continuity of care. This continuity of care means that following hospitalization, a patient's care strategy can remain in place and be easily communicated to a primary physician, specialist or other caregiver. In turn, this denotes an opportunity to reduce the likelihood of a patient returning to the emergency room within close proximity to an initial visit. Because there is such a great pressure on hospitals not simply to reduce the occurrence of high readmission rates but also to substantially improve the integration of Information Technologies with which to do so, the Health Information Systems Managers is a critical role-player in the future of most hospitals and healthcare facilities.