The diversity of Health Information Management skills – a personal experience Vicki Bennett Manager Information Strategy Section Information Service Branch Health Insurance Commission

What to study? Medicine Physiotherapy/Occupational Therapy Accounting – a false start! Cumberland College Open Day…. Health Information Management Lots of jobs Lots of jobs Good money Good money Part-time work Part-time work Course content Course content

When I graduated…

Broad work experience Public and Private Hospitals HIM, coder, data manager, auditor HIM, coder, data manager, auditor City and Country Hospitals A Veterans Hospital University teaching IT NCCH – databases and coder training International consulting

And mother of 4!

Health Insurance Commission Medicare, PBS, Immunisation Register, Organ Donor, etc Title - Manager, Health Information Section, Health Informatics Branch HIM-free zone! Moulding of role to suite my skills Vision – “Improving Australia’s health through payments and information”

My Role Represent HIC on HDSC, SIMC and in other national forums Assist researchers, etc to use HIC data to improve health outcomes Protect the privacy of individuals while delivering the vision Ensure good information management principles are put in place

The HIM ‘Tool Kit’ All HIM’s have these skill Our Uni courses teach them Our experiences provide fertile training grounds to sharpen our skills Self-belief is essential. We are often our own worst enemy!

Clinical Knowledge Medical Terminology Medical Science Healthcare delivery models Healthcare ‘politics’

Management Skill Large unqualified teams Shift workers/Part-time Mature workforce – IT issues Poor work conditions – under valued Often little back-up Decision makers with responsibility Strategic thinking - seeing the big picture

Communication Skills Written skills to present a case Negotiate to achieve mutual benefit Adapt communication to suit audience: Clerical staff – need instruction Clerical staff – need instruction Doctors – need coaxing Doctors – need coaxing Management – need information Management – need information Patients – need understanding Patients – need understanding

IT skills and knowledge Basic desktop skills Systems analysis and design SQL – Select/From/Where Logical problem solving Data warehousing/relational databases Web environments

Research Skills A University degree! Basic numeracy Research methodology Epidemiology

Health Information Data Sources Morbidity data stores Cancer registers Other registers/notifiable diseases Private Hospitals Data Bureau Mortality data Casemix data National Health Data Dictionary

Next…Fiji

What about you? What skills have you developed through your many and varied experiences? How could you better use these improve health care delivery? How will you change your next job application to value your HIM ‘tool kit’? HIM ‘tool kit’?