On Storage
Using Clouds to Comply to HITECH
In February of 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act was passed. The new act desired to promote the use of Electronic Health Records, or EHR, in clinics and hospitals. Physicians who were able to demonstrate use of electronic health records by 2011 would become eligible for Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements in the amount of $40,000 to $65,000, while hospitals would become eligible for several million under the new act.
To become eligible for the incentives, and to avoid paying fines if they should not meet the new criteria by 2016, many clinics and medical facilities have begun scrambling for storage solutions and implementing grand Health informatics strategies. Finding a great system at an affordable price hasn't been so easy though for many medical clinics and institutions.
Sure, current Electronic Health Record systems sell top-of-the-line software and hardware packages, but many of these are overpriced and not nearly as efficient as implementing a cloud would be. The come riddled with additional fees and often take 6 months to a year to implement. Some are even so expensive that smaller clinics are unable to afford the upfront costs. However, a cloud system would allow hospitals and clinics to avoid hiring an entirely new IT staff and would greatly reduce maintenance costs.
However, one of the biggest concerns for many of the clinics and hospitals having to create such systems is security. Not only do these facilities carry vital patient information which if it were to be released, would be in direct violation of HIPAA, but they also contain valuable research information that is also at a high risk for being stolen. What many don't realize is that cloud computing is actually much safer than hard systems. Clouds are able to contain multiple levels of security, and are at a lower risk of being hacked in to or crashing. Unless the internet goes down, a hospital or clinic's information should remain safe.
Health informatics specialists are quickly catching onto the idea of integrating cloud technology into electronic health record systems. Many EHR companies are even beginning to offer systems with cloud capabilities to provide medical institutions with affordable, functional, and highly secure solutions.
The implementation of EHR could actually make maintaining information easier for medical institutions, but these facilities are wasting their time and money if they choose to purchase a hard EHR system that will require a new team and frequent upgrades. The incentives alone won't cover the costs of a new workforce and the new hardware needed. Cloud EHR systems, however, will provide medical institutions with the storage they need without compromising their current systems and will allow them to easily and affordably comply to HITECH.