Healthcare Information Technology Exam Guide for CompTIA Healthcare IT Technician and HIT Pro Certifications

Forces of Change in Today’s National Healthcare System

The long journey to the passage of PPACA, ARRA, and HITECH goes back several decades. In 1991, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded that computerization could help to improve patient records and information management, leading to higher quality of care, in its landmark report, The Computer-Based Patient Record: An Essential Technology for Healthcare.¹¹ That was followed nearly a decade later with other groundbreaking reports calling for the use of healthcare IT to improve the efficiency, safety, and quality of the U.S. healthcare system—To Err Is Human in 1999¹² and Crossing the Quality Chasm in 2001.¹³ These reports were a call to action for a paradigm shift from reliance on paper and ...