The HITECH Act
Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, abbreviated HITECH Act, was enacted under Title XIII of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Under the HITECH Act, the United States Department of Health and Human Services is spending $25.9 billion to promote and expand the adoption of health information technology. The Washington Post reported the inclusio…
Electronic health record
An electronic health record is the systematized collection of patient and population electronically-stored health information in a digital format. These records can be shared across different health care settings. Records are shared through network-connected, enterprise-wide information systems …
What does the HITECH Act mean to you?
The HITECH Act was created to promote and expand the adoption of health information technology, specifically, the use of electronic health records (EHRs) by healthcare providers. The Act also removed loopholes in the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) by tightening up the language of HIPAA.
What did the HITECH Act do?
The primary purpose of the HITECH Act is to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare by expanding the adoption of health information technology.
What is true regarding Hitech?
What is true regarding HITECH? It was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It is enforced by the HHS Office for Civil Rights. It increased the enforcement of the privacy and security of electronic transmission and health information. All of the above ans: all of the above.
What is the purpose of Hitech?
The purpose of HITECH is to expand the regulations of HIPAA or the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act. It protects EHR or electronic health records from breaches or improper usage. HITECH compliance requirements are similar to those outlined in HIPAA law but more comprehensive.
Is meaningful use part of HITECH Act?
The HITECH Act supports the concept of meaningful use (MU) of electronic health records (EHR), an effort led by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).
What are the 4 purposes of meaningful use?
MIPS Builds on Meaningful Use Improve quality, safety, efficiency, and reduce health disparities. Engage patients and family. Improve care coordination, and population and public health. Maintain privacy and security of patient health information.
What is Meaningful Use Act?
In the context of health IT, meaningful use is a term used to define minimum U.S. government standards for electronic health records (EHR), outlining how clinical patient data should be exchanged between healthcare providers, between providers and insurers and between providers and patients.
What are 3 components of the HITECH Act?
Keep reading to learn more.What are the Major Components of the HITECH Act.Component 1: Expanded HIPAA Rules.Component 2: Stricter Enforcement.Component 3: Broader Application.
What are the 3 main components of meaningful use?
To fulfill the requirements for Meaningful Use, eligible professionals must successfully complete the 3 main components of the program: 1) use certified EHR, 2) meet core and menu set objectives, and 3) report clinical quality measures.
What are 2 major benefits of meaningful use?
The benefits of Meaningful Use Not only do participating providers encourage and participate in a smooth exchange of health information, but they also enable the delivery of higher quality patient care, leading to better outcomes at a lower cost.
What is meaningful use called now?
Meaningful use will now be called "Promoting Interoperability" as CMS focuses on increasing health information exchange and patient data access.
Is meaningful use still in effect 2022?
For calendar year (CY) 2022, in order to be considered a meaningful user and avoid a downward payment adjustment, eligible hospitals and CAHs may use (1) existing 2015 Edition certification criteria, (2) the 2015 Edition Cures Update criteria, or (3) a combination of the two in order to meet the CEHRT definition, as ...
What are the 5 goals of HITECH?
The goal of HITECH is not just to put computers into physician offices and on hospital wards, but rather to use them toward five goals for the US healthcare system: improve quality, safety and efficiency; engage patients in their care; increase coordination of care; improve the health status of the population; and ...
What are HITECH Act requirements?
Under the HITECH Act "unsecured PHI" essentially means "unencrypted PHI." In general, the Act requires that patients be notified of any unsecured breach. If a breach impacts 500 patients or more then HHS must also be notified. Notification will trigger posting the breaching entity's name on HHS' website.
What is the impact of the HITECH Act?
Background and objective: The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act has distributed billions of dollars to physicians as incentives for adopting certified electronic health records (EHRs) through the meaningful use (MU) program ultimately aimed at improving healthcare outcomes.
What are the meaningful use criteria?
There are three basic components of meaningful use: 1) The use of a certified EHR in a meaningful manner. 2) The electronic exchange of health information to improve quality of health care. 3) The use of certified EHR technology to submit clinical quality and other measures.
What are the goals of the EHR mandate?
The main goal of implementing EHRs is improving the quality of care by reducing medical errors, providing an effective means of communication, sharing information between healthcare providers, and collecting health information for educational and research purposes.
How has the enforcement of HIPAA changed since HITECH?
Surprisingly the percentage of investigations resulting in enforcement action more than halved between 2013 and 2020 - the reason being that OCR in...
How did the burden of proof change under the HIPAA Breach Notification Rule?
Prior to HITECH, when a violation of HIPAA occurred the Department of Health and Human Services had to prove the violation had resulted in the unau...
How has HITECH evolved in recent years?
In April 2018, CMS renamed the Meaningful Use incentive program as the Promoting Operability program. The change moved the focus of the program bey...
Is the Promoting Operability program still incentivized?
The Promoting Operability program now forms part of the Medicare Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) which also measures the quality of hea...
How do the Affordable Care Act and HITECH work together?
The provisions of the HITECH Act that led to more efficient and secure information sharing enabled the expansion of state-run Health Information Ex...
What is HITECH in healthcare?
HITECH in healthcare can mean different things to different people depending on their place in the healthcare ecosystem. For example, for HIPAA Cov...
Why was HITECH implemented and what were its results?
Primarily, HITECH was implemented to modernize the healthcare industry and make it more efficient while remaining secure. In terms of results, the...
What did the HITECH Act do?
The HITECH Act revolutionized the way many healthcare facilities create, use, share, and maintain healthcare data. It made the health service more...
What are the major components of the HITECH Act?
The major components of the HITECH Act are the Meaningful Use program and the provisions that were subsequently integrated into HIPAA. While the fi...
What is HITECH compliance?
The term HITECH compliance relates to complying with the provisions of HITECH that amended the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules and complying with...
What is the purpose of the HITECH Act?
One of the key measures introduced by the HITECH Act and Meaningful Use incentive program was to make Business Associates and subcontractors liable for any unauthorized disclosures of ePHI attributable to their own negligence. Previously, Business Associates and subcontractors could avoid liability for breaches of ePHI by claiming they were unaware of the requirement to be HIPAA compliant. HITECH closed that loophole.
What is the Meaningful Use incentive program?
Several other measures were introduced in the HITECH ACT and Meaningful Use incentive program that apply to every business with access to PHI – whatever formats it is stored or transmitted in. These included a new Breach Notification Rule, increased penalties for businesses responsible for breaches of PHI, and the introduction of HIPAA compliance audits. Businesses applying for Meaningful Use incentive payments also had to conduct a HIPAA Security Rule risk assessment.
How to find out more about HIPAA?
To find out more about HIPAA, the HITECH Act and Meaningful Use incentive program, download our HIPAA Compliance Guide – a valuable source of information that outlines the key essentials of what is required to be HIPAA compliant. Within the Guide there are sections dedicated to Covered Entities obligations and the regulations governing Business Associates, plus a useful resource guide in the Appendix if further information is required about specific topics.
What was the first business associate to be fined for non-compliance with HIPAA?
In June 2016, Catholic Health Care Services of Philadelphia became the first Business Associate to be fined for non-compliance with HIPAA when it agreed to pay $650,000 for failing to conduct a risk assessment and implement appropriate security measures ( read more ).
What happens if a covered entity fails to conduct due diligence on a business associate?
If Covered Entities fail to conduct appropriate checks that the Business Associate is HIPAA compliant, the Covered Entity can be considered liable if a breach of PHI subsequently occurs.
What is the HITECH Act?
The HITECH Act encouraged healthcare providers to adopt electronic health records and improved privacy and security protections for healthcare data. This was achieved through financial incentives for adopting EHRs and increased penalties for violations of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules. The HITECH Act contains four subtitles (A-D).
Why is the HITECH Act Important?
Prior to the introduction of the HITECH Act in 2008, only 10% of hospitals had adopted EHRs. In order to advance healthcare, improve efficiency and care coordination, and make it easier for health information to be shared between different covered entities, electronic health records needed to be adopted.
Why did the HITECH Act introduce incentives?
The HITECH Act introduced incentives to encourage hospitals and other healthcare providers to make the change.
What does subtitle B cover?
Subtitle B covers testing of health information technology, Subtitle C covers grants and loans funding, and Subtitle D covers privacy and security of electronic health information. Subtitle D is also split into two parts. Part 1 is concerned with improving privacy and security of health IT and PHI and part 2 covers the relationship between the HITECH Act and other laws.
Why are EHRs important?
Certified EHRs had to be used in a meaningful way, such as for issuing electronic prescriptions and for the exchange of electronic health information to improve quality of care. The program aimed to improve coordination of care, improve efficiency, reduce costs, ensure privacy and security, improve population and public health, and engage patients and their caregivers more in their own healthcare.
When did the HIPAA breach report come out?
Starting in October 2009, OCR published breach summaries on its website, which includes the name of the covered entity or business associate that experienced the breach, the category of breach, the location of breached PHI, and the number of individuals affected.
How much money did the Department of Health and Human Services spend on Meaningful Use?
The Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) was given a budget in excess of $25 billion to achieve its goals. The HHS used some of that budget to fund the Meaningful Use program – A program that incentivized care providers to adopt certified EHRs by offering monetary incentives.
What is the HITECH Act?
The HITECH Act aimed to use some of that government spending to help the health care industry make the expensive leap into using EHRs. The law provided HITECH Act incentives for this purpose, in the form of extra payments to Medicare and Medicaid providers who transitioned to electronic records. This aim of the law can be considered successful, ...
Why was the HITECH Act created and why is it important?
The HITECH Act aimed to use some of that government spending to help the health care industry make the expensive leap into using EHRs. The law provided HITECH Act incentives for this purpose, in the form of extra payments to Medicare and Medicaid providers who transitioned to electronic records. This aim of the law can be considered successful, with the number of acute care hospitals deploying EHRs expanding from 28% in 2011 to 84% in 2015.
What is the HIPAA Omnibus Rule?
In 2013, the HIPAA Omnibus Rule combined and modernized all the previously mentioned rules into one comprehensive document. Although HIPAA is in its name, this set of regulations formalizes the mandates of both HIPAA and the HITECH Act, and HITECH's updates are woven throughout its DNA. The details of the rule are beyond the scope ...
Why are EHRs important?
However, while EHRs held a lot of promise to improve the health care industry, they also made it much faster and easier to transmit personally identifying data between organizations, which had serious implications for privacy and security . As a result, the HITECH Act established a regulatory framework for EHRs that imposed security and privacy requirements not only on medical providers, but also on other companies and organizations they did business with that might also handle EHR data.
What are HIPAA loopholes?
In particular, there were loopholes in HIPAA when it came to business associates of the medical providers covered by the act. In HIPAA regulatory jargon, business associates are standalone companies that provide support services to medical organizations like billing, scheduling, marketing, or even IT services or software, rather than providing direct medical services to patients. Business associates were theoretically required to adhere to HIPAA's privacy and security requirements, but under the law those rules couldn't be enforced directly onto those companies by the U.S. government; enforcement only applied to the medical organizations themselves, who could in cases of violation simply say they were unaware their business associates were noncompliant and avoid punishment.
When was HIPAA passed?
HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) had been passed in 1996 and, among other goals, was meant to promote the security and privacy of patients' personal data.
What is breach notification?
Breach notification requirements. Medical organizations and business associates must now inform individuals whose personal information has been exposed or potentially exposed by a security breach. The standard for notification is fairly strict: companies must assume in most cases that impermissible use or disclosure of personal health information is potentially harmful and that the subject of that information must be informed about it.
What is the HITECH Act?
To achieve full (and eventually mandatory) participation of the adoption and use of EMR systems nationwide, the HITECH Act authorizes Medicare and Medicaid to provide incentive payments to those hospitals and clinicians who demonstrate “meaningful use” of electronic health records.
What does meaningful use mean?
The definition of meaningful use is somewhat broad, but the government attempts to make it more concrete by stating that meaningful use means providers “need to show they’re using certified EHR technology in ways that can be measured significantly in quality and in quantity.”.
When was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed?
Signed into law by President Obama in 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 was created in an effort to jumpstart and provide a stimulus for our economy. The Act spans many areas, with sections devoted to modernizing the country’s infrastructure, the energy sector, expanding educational opportunities, tax relief, ...
