What, if any relationship do you see between the information available on The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) website and regulatory, accreditation, and reimbursement issues and healthcare information system use and design?
The DHHS website is a great resource to both patients and care providers. The home page is almost too busy with different options and categories, it is overwhelming. These many categories and sections can be explored to answer specific questions. Much information is given pertaining to regulatory guidelines, accreditation, reimbursement and healthcare information systems.
In the ICU where I work the new reimbursement stipulations (regulatory guidelines) implemented by Medicare and Medicaid are guiding how we take care of our patients and how we chart our findings (properly charting bed sores and infections on admission). Can they really expect a patient that has many comorbidities that stays in a hospital for a long period of time not to get an infection? It doesn’t seem right that the hospital will have to cover these costs.
The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems kind of scares me. The implication that patients will be helping to determine reimbursement for providers has many ethical implication. Some of the positive aspects of this change would help improve practice and utilize patient satisfaction to improve care. I worry that most patients are very uneducated about healthcare costs and many activities that occur beyond what the patient can see to give them the best medical care. This is a real different approach to reimbursement, but it can be real beneficial. (Will patients use this information to manipulate the system? )
Having regulatory and accreditation information that is available to consumers and professionals will be a great resource. (Kind of like when the bible was published in the common language, the knowledge of the general public was greatly increased, and there was a leveling of higharchial barriers)This will help patients to know what to expect and healthcare providers to deliver quality care that is regulated and in some ways dictated. This will increase the knowledge of health professionals to know that they are providing adequate and up to date care. I worry that some patients may use this information to find loop holes in the system. Under the Health IT section the main topics of electronic medical record, electronic prescribing, issues in rural IT, health information exchange, and telehealth are discussed. All of these different topics are discussed along with their advantages and disadvantages.
The education of healthcare professionals is generally regulated and ensured, but will the education of the public also increase as well to be able to properly support these changes?
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