Question

Discuss the roles of federal, state, and local public health agencies in the development of standards for informatics in healthcare.

Provide Reference (Within the past five years)

Answer 1

The federal government operates six major health care programs that serve nearly 100 million Americans. Collectively, these programs significantly influence how health care is provided by the private sector.

federal government can leverage its unique position as regulator, purchaser, provider, and research sponsor to improve care - not only in these six programs but also throughout the nation’s health care system.

The book describes the federal programs and the populations they serve: Medicare (elderly), Medicaid (low income), SCHIP (children), VHA (veterans), TRICARE (individuals in the military and their dependents), and IHS (native Americans). It then examines the steps each program takes to assure and improve safety and quality of care.The Institute of Medicine proposes a national quality enhancement strategy focused on performance measurement of clinical quality and patient perceptions of

the health-related activities of state and local government are: traditional public health, including health monitoring, sanitation, and disease control; the financing and delivery of personal health services including Medicaid, mental health, and direct delivery through public hospitals and health departments; environmental protection, including protection against man-made environmental and occupational hazards; and the regulation of the providers of medical care through certificate-of-need and state rate setting as well as licensing and other functions.

State and local government involvement in public health began with the great epidemics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Initially, government responded to these epidemics by instituting quarantine measures and efforts to improve community sanitation. Generally these were directed by physicians appointed by the city or state government. Today we know that the causes of these epidemics were in large part social and economic. Counted among them were a rapidly growing and fast moving population; the urbanization of the Eastern seaboard which resulted in overcrowding, bad housing, inadequate sanitary facilities,and also. Medicaid, mental health, and direct delivery through public hospitals and health departments; environmental protection, including protection against man-made environmental and occupational hazards; and the regulation of the providers of medical care through certificate-of-need and state rate setting as well as licensing and other functions.