ABSTRACT
Conforming to applicable laws and regulations is the foremost concern of any medical practitioner. There are Federal as well as State regulations in addition to guidelines issued by applicable practice boards. The key federal regulations dealing with Information Technology in Healthcare are the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act) and the subsequent amendments to it contained in the HITECH Act (The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act). The HITECH Act also provides incentives for practices to adopt and demonstrate “meaningful use” of Electronic Health Records. Many practitioners question whether the use of Cloud-based services conforms to the provisions of HIPAA & HITECH and whether such use qualifi es their practices for fi nancial incentives under the HITECH Act. In this chapter we will review some of the key aspects of applicable regulations and the obligations they impose upon healthcare providers. We will evaluate whether these obligations can be fulfi lled by practices using Cloud-based services and how easy or hard it is to do so.
