The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act - 2030 Words

In 2011, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality recorded that Americans made nearly 40 million hospital stays (Pfuntner). Each of these stays in each of the 4,000 hospitals and medical centers across the nation produced, at the very least, one medical record. Every healthcare provider needs to process and maintain these records with haste and accuracy. Failure to do so can result in a multitude of repercussions, ranging from the mistreatment of patients to errors in reporting to insurance that create a cycle of rising costs for both patients and healthcare providers. ERP systems, or Electronic Medical Records system as it has come to be known in the healthcare industry aim to serve a field with an exponentially growing need for†¦show more content†¦Increased volume is not the only concern stemming from the bill when implanting ERP; employers, individuals, and healthcare providers must now maintain more detailed patient records to ensure that patients qualify for cove rage. Implementing an ERP system is a huge undertaking, and failure is not only a possibility, but fairly likely. The Government Accountability Office reported in 2008 that almost half of the US government’s IT projects had to be revamped because of funding issues or change of project scope, and half of those projects needed restructuring twice or more (GAO). One of the more recent projects responsible for headaches was heavily scrutinized in the public eye from day one. In October 2013, the US government launched HealthCare.gov, a health insurance exchange website operating under the parameters set by the Affordable Care Act that was designed to assist American citizens in enrolling in health insurance plans provided by third party carriers or Medicaid. Almost immediately after launch, the website’s data center, managed by Verizon, suffered an equipment failure, causing the site to go down completely for at least a day. Stress tests were not completed until the day prior to launch, and the mind numbingly long loading times