Welcome to my weekend rant about the mixing of terms in healthcare IT. If you prefer more substantial posts, come back tomorrow;-) If you like these rants, check out my previous EMR versus EHR rant.
I’ve been lucky to have been writing about the HITECH act when it first came out. In the beginning it seemed (at least from my perspective) that everyone was talking about the government stimulus money for EHR software as the “HITECH Act.” Then, shortly thereafter, a few healthcare IT conferences seemed to stop calling it the HITECH Act in favor of calling it the ARRA stimulus money. So, I shifted my language to call it the ARRA stimulus money. Although, I’d also regularly just call it the EHR stimulus money as well. Just seems simpler to me.
Then, this past week it seems that a number of people have moved from calling it the ARRA stimulus money back to the HITECH Act.
Yes, I know it’s more or less the same and that they mean the same thing. However, for a blogger who’s trying to attract more readers and communicate a certain topic, it’s kind of annoying. Certainly this isn’t an earth shattering thing, but it would nice if we were just consistent about something.
I should just start referencing it as “ARRA’s HITECH Act of EHR stimulus money.” Maybe that would cover all the bases for everyone. Unless people want me to call it the EMR stimulus money and not EHR stimulus money. *sigh*
HITECH will motivate healthcare entities to maintain robust logs and audit trails recording access to all electronic patient data, whether the data be in email, qualified e-patient records, treatment equipment or otherwise. Compliance will not be easy or cheap. –Ben