Nudging best practice: the HITECH act and behavioral medicine

In February 2009, the US Congress passed the Health Information Technology for Economic and Consumer Health (HITECH) Act in order to stimulate the “meaningful use” of health information technology within medical practice. Economists have noted that other sectors in the economy have demonstrated subs...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTranslational behavioral medicine Vol. 1; no. 1; pp. 175 - 181
Main Authors Hesse, Bradford William, Ahern, David K, Woods, Susan S
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer-Verlag 01.03.2011
Subjects
Cross Cultural Psychology
Family Medicine
General Practice
Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Health Psychology
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Practice and Public Health Policies
Public Health
Sociotechnical
Electronic health record
Informatics
Meaningful use
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Summary:In February 2009, the US Congress passed the Health Information Technology for Economic and Consumer Health (HITECH) Act in order to stimulate the “meaningful use” of health information technology within medical practice. Economists have noted that other sectors in the economy have demonstrated substantive productivity improvements from investments in information technology but that the health sector lags behind. The “meaningful use” stipulation of the HITECH Act focuses systems redesign within the health sector on user’s behavior, a provision that opens a window of contribution from specialists in behavioral medicine. There are several ways for behavioral medicine to become involved in the redesign. One is to help craft a health services environment that optimizes communication between providers and patients, between primary care and specialist care providers, and between patients and their caregivers. Another is to help practitioners and policy-makers create new “decisional architectures” for “nudging” behavior in positive ways through better incentives, understandable instructions, healthy defaults, instructive feedback, back-ups for error, and structured decision-making. New funding opportunities in research, implementation, and training may facilitate the involvement of behavioral medicine—an involvement that is crucial for ensuring the success of reform efforts in the long run.
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ISSN:1869-6716
1613-9860
DOI:10.1007/s13142-010-0001-3