Briefly describe each of the following terms and their relationship to each othe

Question

Briefly describe each of the following terms and their relationship to each other: 1.Community health information network (CHIN) 2.Regional health information organization (RHINO) 3.National health information network (NHIN) 4.Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) Once you have defined the terms and their relationship to each other, explain their relationship to the development of a patient-centered management system and electronic health records (EHRs). You are required to use three qualified references Please provide references. Thank you

Explanation / Answer

1. A Community Health Information Network (CHIN) is an Internet based network of systems which helps in the exchange of a member clinical, financial and client information among healthcare providers electronically .It helps improve the efficiency and delivery of healthcare in the community within a particular geography. CHIN acts as a combination of healthcare services, products and technologies.

It permit multiple providers, payers, employers, and related healthcare entities within a geographic area to share and communicate client, clinical, and payment information.

2. A Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO) is a group of many healthcare organizations within a specific area coming together and sharing healthcare-related information via electronic mediums which are based on the standard healthcare information technology (HIT). The role of RHIO is to typically oversee the organizations sharing Health related information and provide means of sharing information among these organizations.

3. The Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) is a program that comes under the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and was established in 2004. The aim of NHIN is to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare in the U.S. by establishing a mechanism through which electronic health information exchange becomes feasible nationwide.

4. The HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act, which was signed in 2009, is a legislation that was created to help stimulate the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) in the United States. The HITECH Act provided ONC the authority to set the standards for the stimulus program and to manage the adoption of EHRs in the nations.

The US health-care system is a highly complex and fragmented segment and uses multiple IT systems and many vendors who were incorporating different standards. The NHIN empowered by HITECH act and its implementation through the RHIOs and CHINs has empowered clinicians provide better healthcare services to its clients and help bridge the gaps that existed in the US health-care industry.

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) have become a vital and integral part of the all the healthcare system. EHRs improve efficiency and improves patient care. EHRs can help physicians and clinicians to make better decision and influence the way a patient is treated.

Health Information Exchange (HIE) is very important part of a federal EHR Meaningful Use. It is the medium of all the EHR providers to connect to each other and share the patient data over a single platform. The EHRs connected to HIEs can share via standard set of rules and documentation such as CCD(Continuity of Care Document) and CCR(Continuity of Care Record).

All these together influence a patient’s care by

1. Saving time by avoiding re-admissions

2. Reduce costs by avoiding duplicate testing

3. Improve diagnoses

4. Helps maintain central patient history.

5. Improves the know-how of physicians.

6. Manage patient centric programs as Medicare and Medicaid.

An example of the whole system can help understand the impact better.

A person living at Long Island in NY visits one of the primary care physicians who uses a particular EHR system to maintain his/her patient data. A patient member then goes to one of the hospitals in Long Island, for example, the Northwell health care hospitals. Northwell maintains its own HIE and connects all of its hospitals together. The care manager at Northwell searches for the patient member in their system and the system interacts with their HIE and pulls the data of the patient member, the whole history of that patient. The doctor can determine the patient history and can have access access to all the clinical data of the patient. It saves the member any retest or gaps in care. Also, as the Northwell HIE is connected to the RHIO of NY state, any information of the patient which was outside the Northwell HIE is also accessible.

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