THE PROGRESSION OF THE ROLE AND FUNCTIONS OF H.I.M PROFESSIONALS

SHOKOYA O. JOHN 16 – JUNE – 2017 C-SUITE H.I.M CONSULTING PREPARED BY:

Objective A Look into the Past, Present, and Future of the role and functions of HIM professionals to assess past trends and predict emerging roles and functions that will help to create a vision for the future of HIM.

What is H.I.M? Health information management (HIM) is the practice of acquiring, analyzing, and protecting digital and traditional medical information vital to providing quality patient care. It is a combination of business, science, and information technology. The World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the proper collection, management and use of information within healthcare systems "will determine the system's effectiveness in detecting health problems, defining priorities, identifying innovative solutions and allocating resources to improve health outcomes".World Health Organization (WHO)

H.I.M Professional cont. Health information management professionals plan information systems, develop health policy, and identify current and future information needs. In addition, they may apply the science of informatics to the collection, storage, analysis, use, and transmission of information to meet legal, professional, ethical and administrative records-keeping requirements of healthcare delivery. They work with clinical, epidemiological, demographic, financial, reference, and coded healthcare data. Health Information Professionals have been described to "play a critical role in the delivery of healthcare through their focus on the collection, maintenance and use of quality data to support the information-intensive and information-reliant healthcare system". information systemshealth policyinformaticshealthcare

What are the functions of H.I.M Professionals? Traditionally the basic functions of Health Information Management was to serve as a custodian of patient health information (also known as health records). Apart from serving as custodian of patient’s health information, H.I.M professionals also sees to the retrieving of case-note for follow-up care and chronological filing of the patient’s folders for future references.

What are the functions of H.I.M Professionals? Cont. In the recent time, there has been a tremendous increases in the roles and functions of H.I.M Professionals. Functions which include; o Clinical coding o Health Statistics o Medical Billing o Monitoring and evaluation o Health Data Auditing o Claims Management o Privacy and Confidentiality Officer etc. This was as a result of advancement in the level of education acquired by H.I.M Professionals which has enabled them take on additional roles and becomes more relevant in the health sector.

What are the functions of H.I.M Professionals? Cont. Judging by the above, it is crystal clear that the roles and functions of H.I.M Professionals is an ever growing one as they commit to continuous training and obtaining higher degrees in education. The idea to computerize the healthcare sector has also further enhanced the practice of H.IM professionals and further impact on their roles and function.

THE FUTURE OF H.I.M PROFESSIONALS AND THEIR ROLES The future of H.I.M Professionals remain promising as more work are been created and the scope of their functions continue to increase. Although this is not without a cost. The roles and functions of H.I.M profession will become more challenging and tasking. * H.I.M Professionals will focused more on Information Governance and enterprise. The focus will be more of utilizing the information generated rather than just being the custodian of patient health information. HIM Professional is in a position to serve as data broker for healthcare organization.

Enterprise Information Governance Enterprise information management” (EIM) Gartner defines EIM as is an integrative discipline for structuring, describing, and governing information assets across organizational and technological boundaries to improve efficiency, promote transparency, and enable business insight. Information quality and integrity controls should be instituted across the enterprise. With the increase in interoperability and information exchange, any quality and integrity problem could have cascading and potentially deleterious effects across the continuum of healthcare delivery as well. For example, incomplete, inaccurate, or missing documentation, inconsistent availability of data and information, and inability to capture, track, or cumulate data and information could lead to less than ideal patient care or vital business outcomes.

Enterprise information management” (EIM) cont... The goal of EIM is to ensure that that information is trustworthy and actionable. When implementing standards, policies, and business rules of an EIM program, it is imperative to ensure that information has the following attributes: Trustworthiness: What is the level of reliability and trustworthiness of information? Relevancy: Is the information of benefit to the user’s current need(s)? Timeliness: Is the information “fit for use?” Is it the “right information available at the right time?” Accuracy: How accurate are the patient identifiers across the EMPI (i.e., duplicate/overlapping identifiers)? Integrity: Implementing an EHR can largely solve the issue of information availability, but only if it’s “good” information. Are copy/paste issues being addressed in the EHR? How has this issue impacted documentation integrity/risk levels for healthcare organizations?

Information Governance (IG) Information governance, or IG, is the set of multi- disciplinary structures, policies, procedures, processes and controls implemented to manage information at an enterprise level, supporting an organization's immediate and future regulatory, legal, risk, environmental and operational requirements. Information governance should determine the balance point between two potentially divergent organizational goals: extracting value from information and reducing the potential risk of information.

Information Governance (IG) cont.. Information governance reduces organizational risk in the fields of compliance, operational transparency, and reducing expenditures associated with e-discovery and litigation response. An organization can establish a consistent and logical framework for employees to handle data through their information governance policies and procedures. These policies guide proper behavior regarding how organizations and their employees handle electronically stored information Information governance encompasses more than traditional records management. It incorporates information security and protection, compliance, data governance, electronic discovery, risk management, privacy, data storage and archiving, knowledge management, business operations and management, audit, analytics, IT management, master data management, enterprise architecture, business intelligence, big data, data science, and finance. records managementinformation securitydata governanceelectronic discoveryrisk managementknowledge managementmaster data managemententerprise architecturebusiness intelligencebig data science

Relationship between Information Governance and EIM EIM relies on the processes that are developed through an effective information governance program. Information governance is the means (the “how”), with EIM being the ultimate goal (the “what”) for the organization. Essentially, EIM provides the processes and tools to control the use, access, distribution, and retention of an organization’s information assets.

EIM works within the framework of the information governance accountability infrastructure to ensure enterprise-wide compliance. EIM applies information governance policies and standards across individual business units cross-organizationally to ensure that collaborative, integrative efforts are applied uniformly and consistently to meet strategic information governance goals and objectives. the focus of EIM is in the tactical implementation of the information governance program. Desired business outcomes are what will provide the value-based evidence needed for EIM programs to demonstrate solid benefits. outcomes such as patient safety (i.e., correct use of EHR defaults), quality of care delivery, business intelligence to enable strategic decision making, reimbursement management optimization, and cost-effective risk assessments are all dependent upon the quality and integrity of an organization’s information assets. Relationship between Information Governance and EIM cont..

EIM will be progressively more driven by the need for increased productivity and competitive advantage, which will be achieved when the right information is readily available and supports new resources like analytics. Analytics is needed for competitive advantage and for drivers for initiatives such as accountable care organizations and value based purchasing.

CONCLUSION By continuously examining the roles and functions and recreating a body of knowledge, we continue to build on it and improve it. Indeed, the HIM profession is diverse, is growing in many directions, and is not easy to explain to others outside of the field, but that is what makes it a great profession. It includes many avenues to pursue, and just when you think you have reached your final role, another appears. By continuously examining our roles and functions and recreating our body of knowledge, we continue to grow as a profession.

THANK YOU