HIT-Health Information Technology
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) became law in 2009 and provided investments through various incentives programs to accelerate health information technology adoption.
Health information technology provides the umbrella framework for health system transformation that enables care coordination among clinicians, contains costs through the sharing of prior medical information useful in diagnosis and treatment decision making, facilitates patient registries, enables quality reporting and empowers individuals to participate in their wellness and health. Some benefits of consistent utilization of health information technology include:
- Improvement in health care quality;
- Prevention of medical errors;
- Reduction in health care costs;
- Increased administrative efficiencies;
- Decreased paperwork; and
- Expanded access to affordable care.
Interoperable HIT will improve individual patient care. It will also provide many public health benefits including:
- Early detection of infectious disease outbreaks around the country;
- Improved tracking of chronic disease management; and
- Evaluation of health care based on value enabled by the collection of de-identified price and quality information that can be compared.