impetus for health information exchange (HIE) in the United States

Unit 8 Assignment Unit outcomes addressed in this Assignment:  Discuss the impetus for health information exchange (HIE) in the United States.  Describe basic HIE organizational structures, architectures, and services.  Reinforce the need for data stewardship in HIE services.  Identify the state, regional, and local activities in achieving benefits and overcoming challenges for HIE organizations.  Describe the federal government’s concept of a nationwide health information network. Course outcome(s) assessed/addressed in this Assignment: HI300-5: Identify current federal initiatives aimed at promoting electronic health information exchange. Instructions: As you have discussed so far in this course, healthcare has lagged behind other industries in terms of digitization of records, in particular patient health records. Write a paper that includes the following:  Explain the importance of information technology (IT) in patient transitions in different types of healthcare settings.  Provide some insight into the status of the federal government initiatives that are underway (regional health information networks, electronic health records that are available from anywhere, etc.) with the goal of creating a health information exchange in the United States.  Finally, knowing the status of the NHIN and initiatives, use critical thinking to analyze how your primary healthcare provider compares.  Review the Stage 1 and Stage 2 meaningful use core and objectives for eligible professionals at the following site: Source: HealthIT: Achieve Meaningful Use. Retrieved from https://www.healthit.gov/providersprofessionals/ehr-implementation-steps/step-5-achieve-meaningful-use  Based on what you learned about how to achieve meaningful use, describe a specific example of how your provider’s office is state-of-the-art.  Describe an example where the office is also lagging behind. Using that example, identify the primary obstacles the office faces, describe several potential solutions to this problem, and identify the one that would best fit your provider’s office. Requirements: The Assignment should be three to four pages in length, prepared in a Microsoft Word document, and APA-formatted.