HITECH Act Overview
On February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) as an economic stimulus package providing investment in the nation’s infrastructure, employment, transportation, education and other fields.
Within ARRA, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act specifically targeted healthcare by providing the means to structure a paperless national health information network. To do so, the HITECH Act provides more than $40 billion to aid in that development through a core effort to incentivize physician practices and hospital systems to adopt electronic health records (EHRs). Within the provisions of the Act, defined "eligible professional” healthcare providers are eligible for up to $44,000 or $63,750 per provider.
The main stimulus funding categories include:
- Greater than $20 billion in Medicare and Medicaid incentive funds to assist providers in adopting EHRs.
- Within the HITECH Act structure, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is directing the criteria that healthcare providers must meet to receive stimulus funding, while the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is overseeing the functionality that electronic health records must meet.
- $650 million for the establishment of 70 Regional Extension Centers (RECs) to link 1000-provider clinical networks with the capabilities to electronically link provider and patient data and communication exchange.
- $560 million for state governments to lead the development of Health Information Exchange (HIE) capabilities also linking public and private healthcare institutions within and across state lines through technology innovations.
- $4.7 billion for the adoption and utilization of broadband and telemedicine advancement.
- $500 million for the Social Security Administration, $85 million for Indian Health Services and $50 million for information technology within the Veterans Benefit Administration.
The depth and breadth of the funding shows the commitment put forth by the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in advancing patient care and outcomes through EHRs and related health information technology.
As stated by ONC Director David Blumenthal, "The provisions of the HITECH Act are best understood not as investments in technology per se but as efforts to improve the health of Americans and the performance of their healthcare system. The installation of EHRs is an important first step.” To achieve its goal of a national health information network, the ONC has four main objectives:
- Achieving meaningful use
- Encourage and support the attainment of meaningful use through incentives and grant programs
- Bolster public trust in electronic information systems by ensuring privacy and security
- Foster continued health information technology (HIT) innovation
As detailed in these pages, meaningful use is the cornerstone of the financial stimulus funds available to healthcare providers. See what Greenway is doing to help you achieve Meaningful Use.
In essence it is the merging of EHR functionality and provider usage of that functionality to improve healthcare before, during and after the patient encounter through better coordinated clinical care, shown by the use of standard quality reporting of patient care measurements, and the ability to perform automated functions such as electronic prescribing, all toward meeting the requirements to achieve stimulus funding.
One of the requirements of qualifying as a meaningful user of EHRs is using a solution that is certified by ONC. Certification is meant to assure healthcare providers that the EHR being used provides the functionality necessary to qualify for meaningful use stimulus funds. With that functionality in hand, providers must show - through quality reporting benchmarks and measurements and sustained electronic prescribing, for example - that they are meaningful users of EHRs to qualify for stimulus funds.