ABSTRACT
Health care regulations at federal, state, and local levels have metastasized to a level where they exert control over virtually every aspect of health care delivery. Although some regulations have to do with safety standards, a huge number of them are really oriented more to the business of health care. There have been and will continue to be political pressures to impose stringent pricing regulations on all sectors of health care as a means of harnessing the rising cost of care. The penalty on Medicare patient readmissions is an example of the perils of regulatory overreach. The role of computer technology in patient care was greatly expanded by the aforementioned HITECH Act. HITECH was intended to promote the role of the computer in patient care, and set forth standardized requirements for the types of data that must be collected from patients. The scenarios are literally the situation in health care in states where Certificate of Need (CON) laws still exist.
