Title: Reading: (U2 M2) The HITECH Act
Course: SkillsCom CMA 200 15.0 > Section: Unit 2 Module 2

HITECH ACT

Before there was Obamacare or officially "The Affordable Care Act, there was a very large piece of legislation called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or the "Recovery Act" or the "Stimulus Package".  One of the largest spending bills ever enacted by congress, this bill committed the US taxpayers to $831 billion in spending between 2009 and 2019.  A significant yet often overlooked part of this spending bill was called HITECH.  The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act went into effect, along with ARRA, on February 18, 2009, over a year before the affordable care act became law.  You will hear lots of talk about HITECH and most folks blame it on the Affordable Care Act, thinking it is part and parcel.  You now know that they are totally separate and that HITECH actually came first.

HITECH It is better known by the slogan adopted to describe the program's implementation, meaningful use. Meaningful Use is short for: Meaningful and Common Use of Electronic Medical Records to Improve Consistency and Clinical Relevance of Patient Medical Documentation.  The idea was to convince physicians and other providers to use a universally accessible medical record and to make sure it contained a minimum standard of patient information, documentation, and relevant history.  This is so you can be treated in an emergency room in Philadelphia with the same access to your medical records as back home in Topeka.

Here is the Final Rule from CMS regarding the enforcement of HITECH: HITECH Act Enforcement Interim Final Rule. The compliance to all of these rules will determine whether or not your provider is reimbursed; therefore as a coder, you need to know what is happening in the legislative world.