Question

• How could health information technology (IT) help link the public and private sectors with quality initiatives? • Since Dr. McClellan's testimony, do the current VBC (value-based care) initiatives support the alignment or sharing of quality initiatives that would benefit the population's health? Please explain with specifics.

Answer 1

Health information technology refers to the storage of Patient's health records, prescription in the form of electronic forms - Electronic Health records, Personal health records ,electronic prescription to facilitate easy storage, analyze and retrieval of information.

Benefits of HIT:

- It reduces traditional paper work.

- More accurate and faster, e-prescriptions automatically reaches pharmacy from physician office and medicines are ready to dispatch before the patients reaches pharmacy thus saves time.

- Laboratory investigations are frequently repeated by health care providers as they do not of have easy access to test results performed before. Recording previous lab values into EHR helps doctors to easily access records thereby reducing repeat lab procedures.

- EHR is inbuilt with reminder systems for both doctors and patients. A reminder text or email is s end to both patient and doctor regarding follow up schedule.

- EHR ensures confidentiality and privacy in protecting health information.

The public and private sectors are linked by Hospital information technology. Electronic health systems containing patient health information, prescriptions can be access only by providers, patients, and the federal government. Any breeching of privacy of medical records results in legal imprisonment and non bailable offense.

VALUE BASED CARE :

VBC refers to a health care delivery model in which the hospitals and providers rendering care to the patient are paid based on the patient health outcomes. The core concept of VBC is reimbursement done to the health care providers based on the stat on the quality of their patient care rather the number of patients they see in a day.

VBC helps to reduce errors in medical procedures and reward is given to the best performing organizations. It increases patient value (doing right thing at a right costs).VBC ensures patient centered care.