Health Information Technology
HIT Overview
If electronic medical records and other forms of health information technology (HIT) haven't made it to your workplace yet, they probably will within the next year or two. HIT has the potential to greatly improve patient care, but whether it fulfills that potential will depend on who's making the decisions about how it is designed and deployed.
Learn more about HITBargaining HIT
New technologies can radically transform how work is done—for better or for worse—and may change the union's role. The contract can be used to ensure frontline caregivers have a voice in the design and implementation of the new systems.
More about Bargaining HITLegal Issues
Even though health professionals are trained to be aware of HIPAA rules and regulations, privacy violations in healthcare settings happens frequently.
More about Legal IssuesBest Practices: The "Go Live" and After
Planning, purchasing, designing, implementing and managing technologies to deal with communicating about patients and across departments and settings is complicated business. The AFT has developed recommendations for best practices in how to approach the challenge.
More Best PracticesHIT in the School Setting
Schools are the hidden care delivery settings in the United States, and are equally vested in the communication of information about the health needs and issues of students in their care. Using HIT to better manage those issues and needs is a valuable resource, and requires an extra measure of consideration about privacy.
More about HIT in the School SettingSurvey Research
Results of a national survey sponsored by AFT Healthcare and conducted by Peter Hart Associates show deep division on issues such as whether new electronic health records improve the quality of patient care or reduce charting time, but strong unanimity on how the systems should be deployed to ensure their effectiveness.
Continue to Survey ResearchResources
Anticipating, researching, purchasing and ongoing management of health information systems is no easy task. A compilation of resources on health information technology, including policy recommendations, journal articles, best practices, brief videos, and AFT newsletter articles are available to meet your informational needs.
Continue to HIT Resources
The hospital where these nurses work went “live” with electronic health records last year. The process was anything but smooth. Listen to their experiences and their recommendations for how things should have been done.
AFT Voices
What impact has health information technology had on the work that you do?
