Goals of meaningful use
The adoption of meaningful use of health information technology by healthcare organizations has the potential to improve patient outcomes across the world (Kaufman, Roberts, Merrill, Lai & Bakken, 2006; Hannah et al., 2011). Meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs) by healthcare organizations is intended to promote patient care and coordinate healthcare. In addition, meaningful use of health information technology is geared towards promoting effective healthcare management within healthcare organizations and aligning health incentives with desired population health outcomes (Schlotzer & Madsen, 2010).
Summary of legal, financial, and ethical issues
Meaningful use of health information technology is negatively impacted by legal, financial, and ethical issues (Gruber, Cummings, Leblanc & Smith, 2009). Legal dilemmas hamper the pace at which electronic health records are implemented within healthcare organizations. First, the adoption of HIT increases the amount of healthcare data within an organization. The huge amount of data may result in information overload that could make healthcare professionals overlook vital clinical findings. Within the legal context, such overlooking of vital clinical data could be termed as negligence, which might result in a lawsuit. Lawsuits as a result of clinical data negligence negatively impact healthcare professionals and organizations. Second, the adoption of HIT by healthcare providers could increase healthcare professionals’ legal responsibilities and accountability issues. With the adoption of EHRs, it is easy to identify clinicians who access certain types of data stored in computer systems. The identification of the clinicians who sign into computers is achieved through computer-based auditing procedures. Thus, clinicians are held accountable and responsible for the access to crucial healthcare data. Third, the use of electronic documents containing patients’ data has resulted in many lawsuits involving healthcare organizations and insurance firms. This is because clinicians might overlook crucial information when electronically signing patients’ documents that could be used to claim refunds from insurance firms (Gruber et al., 2009).
Meaningful use of HIT is also characterized by ethical issues. First, the use of EHRs increases the portability and accessibility of healthcare data, which increases privacy issues. It is required that patients’ data should be confidential, and access to such data should be regulated. Second, there is an ethical issue in the manner that a clinician could be fined or punished for illegal access and use of patients’ data. For example, a clinician could be logged into a computer, and then he or she is called to attend to an emergency case. A bystander could access several patients’ health records after the clinician leaves to attend to the emergency case before he or she signs out. It would be unethical to punish the clinician because he or she could not be the person who illegally accessed the patients’ electronic data.
Financial issues have impediments that hinder the meaningful use of HIT. First, it has not been made clear who should pay for the cost of implementing EHRs. It has been shown that most of the monetary benefits of EHRs within many healthcare organizations go to healthcare payers rather than providers. Healthcare managers argue that patients should bear the cost of implementing EHRs while healthcare consumers insist that healthcare providers should pay for the costs of using EHRs. Second, EHRs for minors should be kept until a child attains 21 years of age. It is not clear who should pay for the storage of the minors’ EHRs until they attain 21 years of age (Gruber et al., 2009; Kadry, Sanderson & Macario, 2010).
The issues act as barriers
Management bodies of several healthcare organizations may have a negative attitude towards adopting HIT because they fear facing legal hurdles that might derail their institutions’ progress (Kadry et al., 2010). For example, a lawsuit that involves a clinician who is accused of negligence due to use of wrong electronic health records data might make other clinicians be reluctant to use HIT to manage patients’ data. Also, lawsuits involving healthcare providers and insurance firms might rule that healthcare providers should pay patients huge amounts of money as compensation for wrong recording of data that are used to claim refunds from insurance firms. Such happenings would greatly derail the implementation of HIT within healthcare organizations. Ethical issues present dilemmas in the implementation of HIT. Clinicians might not be comfortable with the fact they should be ethically responsible for actions that expose the privacy of patients. If clinicians are reluctant to use HIT as a result of ethical issues, then it would not be successfully implemented within a healthcare organization. Every healthcare organization analyzes financial issues before it could implement HIT. If the management finds that it would not be feasible to maintain EHR systems, then financial issues would present barriers to the implementation of HIT within the organization (Gruber et al., 2009; Kadry et al., 2010).
How organizations can make successful electronic health record investments
Meaningful use of HIT emphasizes the right use of HIT to improve patient care outcomes. Healthcare organizations need to address ethical, legal, and financial issues so that they could reap the benefits of investing in meaningful use of HIT (Gruber et al., 2009; Kadry et al., 2010). The benefits could include improved quality of healthcare and lower-cost healthcare. HIT lead implementers should encourage conversations among professionals in law, economics, ethics, policymaking, informatics and clinical setups. All these professionals greatly facilitate the process of implementing HIT by offering professional advice on financial, legal, and ethical issues. Healthcare organizations should also form competent committees to lead healthcare professionals in adopting the meaningful use of HIT within healthcare systems. The committees could be essential in acting on issues that arise during the HIT implementation process (Gruber et al., 2009; Kadry et al., 2010).
Implementation of EHR-related meaningful use legislation
EHR-related legislation is aimed to give incentive payments to healthcare organizations that adopt meaningful use of HIT within their systems. The legislation strongly correlates incentive payments with improved patient care (Blumenthal & Tavenner, 2010). My organization implements the legislation by hiring the right professionals to guide the implementation of various aspects of meaningful use of HIT. The goals and objectives of the legislation are interpreted and explained to the management and clinicians. The lead implementers report to the management any legal or ethical issues faced when implementing the EHR-related legislation. There are monthly reviews to evaluate the effectiveness meaningful use of HIT within the organization. The reviews are important in ensuring that the EHR-related legislation’s goals are achieved. The management also invites external assessors and evaluators who assess and evaluate the usage of EHRs within the organization. In addition, patients are requested to give their feedback on the effectiveness of EHRs in improving patient care outcomes within the organization.
References
Blumenthal, D., & Tavenner, M. (2010). The “meaningful use” regulation for electronic health records. New England Journal of Medicine, 363(6), 501-504.
Gruber, D., Cummings, G. G., Leblanc, L., & Smith, D. L. (2009). Factors influencing outcomes of clinical information systems implementation: a systematic review. Computers Informatics Nursing, 27(3), 151-163.
Hannah, K. J., DuLong, D., Newbold, S. K., Sensmeier, J. E., Skiba, D. J., Troseth, M. R.,… & Douglas, J. V. (Eds.). (2011). Nursing informatics: Where technology and caring meet. New York, NY: Springer.
Kadry, B., Sanderson, I. C., & Macario, A. (2010). Challenges that limit meaningful use of health information technology. Current Opinion in Anesthesiology, 23(2), 184-192.
Kaufman, D., Roberts, W. D., Merrill, J., Lai, T. Y., & Bakken, S. (2006). Applying an evaluation framework for health information system design, development, and implementation. Nursing research, 55(2), 37-42.
Schlotzer, A., & Madsen, M. (2010). Health information systems: requirements and characteristics. Studies in health technology and informatics, 151(1), 156.