Health Information Management and Assessment

This document provides an overview of the state and federal laws governing long-term care operations and an overview of data collection systems in healthcare organizations. It discusses the role of federal and state governments in financing long-term care services and the need for standardization and information compilation schemes. The document also explores the funding services available for long-term care, such as Medicare and Medicaid, and the accreditation and licensing requirements for healthcare organizations. Additionally, it highlights the importance of data collection in healthcare and the challenges faced in adopting health information technologies.

Running head: HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT AND ASSESSMENT
HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT AND ASSESSMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
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HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT AND ASSESSMENT
To: New hires
From: Administrator
Date:
Subject: Identifying the state and the federal laws which help in governing long - term care
operation of organizations and to monitor accreditations and licensure of the organizations along
with an overview of data collection system in the health care organizations.
There are laws and Regulations governing healthcare organizations. The long term care
organizations and facilities are controlled by both federal as well as state Government and the
standards are developed by agencies paying for services, making rules to license staff and
monitor quality care to the patients.
Long term care refers to social, health and residential services that are provided to patients who
are chronically disabled over a prolonged period of time. Federal and state government are
playing important roles in financing these long term care. There is an increasing need for long
term care services which is determined by the occurrence and frequency of chronic diseases
affecting many lives. Health organizations need to adopt standardizations and retain information
compilation scheme to effectively execute improved performance in treatment. Nursing homes
are the most visible and common form of long term health care regulated by the federal and state
government. There are several funding services financing a wide range of medical services
including acute care and predominantly in the long term health care system. Nursing home
surveys are carried out to certify new facilities that are in compliance with standards that
maintains quality standards. Under the federal system, nursing home must have regulations

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ensuring sufficient nurse staffing, conducting an accurate and comprehensive assessment and
developing care plan for each resident. Long term care financing plans includes:
Medicare- Nursing services and home-health benefits facilitating Medicare financing are inclined
towards a requirement of skilled care. Only post-acute and short-term care is provided by
Medicare Skilled-nursing facilities benefit and is reimbursed based on a reasonable cost. The
services covered under the Medicare home-health benefit includes part time nursing care
provided under the supervision of a medical professional, or, in any physical or occupational
therapy, medical appliances and medical supplies.
Medicaid- The states have a very flexible coverage and reimbursement LTC plan. Medicaid
financing are predominantly for continued care of the older people. The states must cover
services for skilled nursing facilities for people above 21 years of age.
Other federal programs- Other federal programs also fund LTC services. The Veterans '
Administration (VA) is funding the treatment of senior employers and nursing homes. Patient
care is restricted to 6 months for non-military services. Most states provide additional revenue
safety subsidies to residents of home care facilities (long-term nonmedical care services).
Medicaid and Medicare grants are accessible only to organizations that fulfill federal
requirements for quality of care. Federal Government needs States to evaluate each year for
every member of Medicaid the value and appropriateness of treatment provided. Various
accrediting organizations and standards of healthcare provision in United States comprises the
Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the National
Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), the American Medical Accreditation Program
(AMAP), the American Accreditation HealthCare Commission/Utilization Review Accreditation

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Commission (AAHC/URAC), and the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory HealthCare
(AAAHC) (JW, 2019). Accountability Foundation and Health Care Research and Quality
Agency (HCRA) also perform significant functions in maintaining the healthcare quality. Each
accrediting body is exceptional in aspects of task, operations, board structures and organizational
history, developing its own accreditation system and programs and setting its own norms of
accreditation. Accreditation is usually considered as a desirable method for establishing
standards and working towards better performance in providing treatment. The licensing purpose
is to guarantee that licensees possess minimum skills to protect government health, security
and/or welfare (Eaton, 2006).
Health care includes a variety of processes for collecting public and personal information such as
wellness studies, administrative registration and accounting and medical documents used by
multiple organizations, including clinics, CHC's, doctors and wellness schemes. All these
organizations collect data on race, gender and vocabulary to some point indicating the ability for
each to supply enrolled data on patients. The integration of information from other sources is one
form of increasing information usefulness. In the lack of appropriate information technology
(IT), the need is to properly integrate and distribute data across health care institutions and even
within a given company. Although wellness schemes cover a big proportion of the American
population, they tend to have minimal direct contact during registration. Health care
organizations that adhere to more advanced data collection process which serve a small part of
the population of the country. The result is nobody in health care system can be able to collect
data for every individual about ethnicity, race and language ("5. Improving Data Collection
across the Health Care System | Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality", 2019). Long-term
care processes are found to be lagging behind other care processes to adopt health information

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technologies (HIT), enhancing the issues with electronic information exchange for facilitating
care transitions (Caffrey & Park-Lee, 2013). By improving existing health IT technologies,
applying personnel instruction and teaching staffs and groups about the causes and significance
of information compilation can assist enhance information collection procedures until such an
inclusion is reached. If space in the health information department is not sufficient for storing all
health records for a specified retention period, additional storage must be located. The facility
should ideally provide storage for recovery, but it may be necessary to make use of outside the
facility of storage space when storage there is limited space available.
. The alternative storage system must be safe and must safeguard the documents against harm,
loss or devastation when an appropriate processing room is required for example, storage boxes,
storage rooms, storage companies and others (Doran et al., 2006).
The ultimate aim of the State and Federal laws relating to healthcare services and the usage of
Information Technology in healthcare is to improve patient’s health outcome and increase the
overall performance of healthcare organizations.

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References:
5. Improving Data Collection across the Health Care System | Agency for Healthcare Research &
Quality. (2019). Ahrq.gov.
Caffrey, C. & Park-Lee, E. (2013). Use of electronic health records in residential care
communities. NCHS Data Brief, 128, 1-8.
Doran, D. M., Harrison, M. B., Laschinger, H. S., Hirdes, J. P., Rukholm, E., Sidani,
S., ...&Tourangeau, A. E. (2006). Nursing-sensitive outcomes data collection in acute
care and long-term-care settings. Nursing Research, 55(2), S75-S81.
Eaton, J. S. (2006). An overview of US accreditation. Council for Higher Education
Accreditation.
JW, V. (2019). Accrediting organizations and quality improvement. - PubMed - NCBI.
Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
Montagu, D. (2003). Accreditation and other external quality assessment systems for healthcare.
DFID Health Systems Resource Centre Working Paper.
QuickStats: Percentage* of Residential Care Communities† That Use Electronic Health
Records,§ by Census Region¶ — United States, 2016. (2018). MMWR. Morbidity and
Mortality Weekly Report, 67(25), 730. doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm6725a8