Health Information Technology Challenges and Innovations in Long-Term Care

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) spent over $38 billion to incentivize the adoption of health information technology (health IT) through the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 but explicitly excluded nursing homes from the incentive program; for that and other reasons, nursing homes have faced challenges adopting health IT.1 Per HealthIT.gov, health IT is a umbrella term that “encompasses an array of technologies.