Ethics and AHRQ, accreditation/reimbursement, and regulatory accreditation

With respect to healthcare system information use and design there are numerous links to healthcare data involving nearly every facet within the healthcare arena, some of which includes: accessibility, ambulatory, emergency, healthcare spending, health care disparities, healthcare use, HIV, Hospitalizations by payer and by state. All of these links provide a wealth of knowledge and information specific to those universal topics.
With respect to regulatory and accreditation the entire section under quality and patient safety addresses specific components meeting those compliance requirements. They provide data which was obtained from AHRQ funded reports specific to the usability of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems. These studies were conducted to identify and promote standards specific to usability and design of such systems. The development of frameworks to evaluated existing system designs was a priority in establishing a baseline for those standards. A focus on User-Interface design was also identified as this is an important factor for integration throughout departments, professions, organizations, reimbursement and regulatory bodies. It is easy to recognize the regulatory emphasis through the use of “government-supported efforts like Practice-Based Research Networks, which are designed to improve the ability to track and evaluate actual HER use through expanded use of captured audit trail data and structured analysis of navigation patterns.” (Ahrq.gov, 2010).
The apparent potential expansiveness of these systems is almost unimaginable and therefore undoubtedly possessing many concerns involving ethics. Confidentiality being one of the central ethical concerns due to the potential limitless accessibility. Despite advances in privacy promotion through policy development, HIPAA, encryption, hardware and software firewalls and the like, there always seems to be a potential weakness or gap in any and all of such preventative measures. Personally, I believe that the benefits outweigh the negatives of such development simply because logic indicates that this has the potential to benefit the greater good with faster, comprehensive, universal access to necessary medical information in an instant. To me, when a critical situation or upcoming event is highly dependent on these factors (timeliness, completeness, and accuracy), the debate is really a non issue. To me the focus needs to be directed towards security.
Medical Informatics is a new up and coming specialization which will likely continue to take on a life of its own as it is molded and shaped through the advent of technology and its subsequent use and misuse. I feel that we as Professional practitioners need to keep abreast of these advancing technologies to promote the best interest of our patients and profession. Unfortunately this will not be an easy task anytime soon due to the rapid technological advances, rapid adoption, opportunistic individuals and apparent policy vacuums that continue to exist.
Fortunately organizations such as the AHRQ will assist with our agenda through continued services such as those identified on the website that involve technology assessment tools, Preventative services and taskforces, practice guidelines as well as grant and funding opportunities among countless other services and information are available to assist in development.




Reference:

AHRQ (2010). http://www.ahrq.gov/