Practice Question
How does the HITECH Act encourage the use of Electronic Health Records (EHRS)?
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Correct Answer:
By providing financial incentives through CMS.
Rationale:
🟢 The HITECH Act (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) was designed to promote adoption and meaningful use of EHRs.
🟢 It does this by offering financial incentives through Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for healthcare organizations and providers that adopt and effectively use certified EHR technology.
🟢 These incentives help offset the high costs of implementation, training, and system maintenance.
🟢 The act also includes penalties later on for failure to adopt, but the central mechanism is incentive-based encouragement.
🟢 Therefore, HITECH encourages EHR use primarily by providing CMS financial incentives for meaningful use.
By penalizing hospitals that use EHRs.
🟢 This statement is the opposite of what the HITECH Act intends.
🟢 The act does not penalize hospitals for using EHRs; rather, it incentivizes their use and may penalize for not adopting or not meeting meaningful use criteria over time.
🟢 The goal is to encourage digital transformation, improve quality, reduce errors, and enhance data exchange, not discourage it.
🟢 Penalizing hospitals for using EHRs would contradict the entire purpose of the legislation.
By requiring all health records to be kept on paper.
🟢 Requiring all records to be on paper goes directly against the intent of HITECH, which is to support electronic health information.
🟢 The act encourages digital records, interoperability, and secure health information exchange.
🟢 Paper records are more prone to loss, illegibility, and fragmentation.
🟢 HITECH is about promoting electronic documentation, not mandating paper.
🟢 By making EHR adoption mandatory for all healthcare providers.
🟢 HITECH strongly encourages adoption and includes incentives and eventual penalties, but it does not simply declare “mandatory for all” in a single blanket requirement.
🟢 Instead, it uses CMS reimbursement structures and the concept of meaningful use to drive uptake.
🟢 Some small or special settings may not be fully covered under every adoption timeline or requirement.
🟢 Saying it is “mandatory for all” oversimplifies the nuanced incentive/penalty framework of the act.
🟢 So, this is not the most accurate description of how HITECH promotes EHR use.
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This question is from Custom NUr 325 Quiz 4 Health Informatics which contains 14 questions.
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Question Details
- Category: RN Nursing Exam(s)
- Subcategory: ATI Exam(s)
- Domain: RN Nursing Informatics📡
- Answer Choices: 4