Impact of Affordable Care Act (ACA) on Health Informatics

The Healthcare Reform is complex with many facets of assumptions, facts, figures and expectations. In this paper the author discusses the potential impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on Ambulatory and Non-ambulatory care settings while expecting 25-30 million new patients to enter our healthcare system by 2016.[1] Applying the theory of "episode multiplier" that might induce over 90-100 million new patient episodes, appointments, contacts and other provider-patient encounters. It will be rather impossible for existing healthcare workforce to handle the volume and manage protocols without monumental increase in Health IT and Information Technology (IT) based automation, the use of Electronic Health Record (EHR) and a connected healthcare infrastructure. In summary, the use of Information Technology in healthcare sector will spur, needing more IT, Health IT and EHR professionals in a short time span. This trend calls for Competency Based Learning (CBL) and a serious restructuring of health sciences based technology training for institutions of higher education and workforce certification programs.