title: The push to increase the use of EHR technology by hospitals and physicians in the United States through the HITECH Act and the Medicare incentive program.
abstract: This article reviews key health care spending and electronic health records (EHR) statistics in the United States (Section II); highlights positive and negative aspects of EHR technology (Sections III and IV); briefly reviews the passage of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) (Section V); discusses the rule passed by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) and to implement the goals of HITECH (Section VI); discusses the rule passed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to implement the goals of HITECH and focuses on significant requirements of the Medicare incentive program rule as it applies to hospitals and physicians (Section VII); and finally, concludes by highlighting certain issues that have been raised regarding the goals of HITECH (Section VIII).
authors.affiliation: Cook County Department of Public Health, USA. jpipersburgh@gmail.com
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pipersburgh
mesh_terms: D057171:American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; D014487:Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S.; D004059:Diffusion of Innovation; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006761:Hospitals; D010820:Physicians; D012052:Reimbursement, Incentive; D014481:United States