Health Information Management (Him)

Quality in HIM

Healthcare systems require competent service deliver due to the sensitivity of the industry with regard to human life. Quality in health information management refers to degree of excellence that enables the healthcare system to achieve impressive service delivery expectations. Handling and storage of healthcare data as well as the processing of the data to relay information supporting healthcare systems must complement the need to offer competent services and save lives. Quality standards in the management of heath information refer to various service delivery concepts enhancing handling of information by use of information management systems (Diana, Khurshid and Luce, 2012). Quality in the healthcare system cannot be isolated from individual departments, which implies that the integrated nature of healthcare facility departments regard information management as an integral functionality just as clinical procedures.

Information management in the healthcare sector requires improvement to face challenges in dealing with healthcare demands as the industry evolves. It implies that as advancements in healthcare continue, maintenance of involved records and data must continue to raise the standards to facilitate congruence in service delivery. Quality across the departments in the healthcare systems must therefore continue to meet the ever-changing encounters with health challenges into the future (Reynolds, Sharp and Zheng, 2009). As an illustration, technology and other health information management (HIM) systems have emerged to offer more efficient handling of data and support healthcare services.

The diverse perspectives in description of what quality entails in HIM makes it difficult to have a single definition of quality. Ability of the HIM system to protect patient’s privacy, ease of retrieval, protection from loss of data, support treatment programs, consistence, completeness, timeliness, appropriate version among other concepts make the definition wider and remote (Dimick, 2011). To cater for all these attributes, technological products capturing several concerns in the functionality of the management form part of modern solutions to HIM. The importance of ensuring that these concepts form part of the HIM outcomes is the support that it must deliver to the quality of healthcare service delivery. Accurate documentation enables appropriate correct diagnosis and treatment using patients’ historical data while maintenance of such data in its original form factors future reliability of the system.

HIM serves patients and healthcare professionals since their reliance on the information given directly touches on the life of the patients and integrity of the clinical services delivered. The centrality of the HIM systems to healthcare therefore cuts across the fundamental tenets of the profession and human life in its care. Providing quality services in terms of HIM outcomes implies that the healthcare profession raises its profile as a reliable and respectable discipline. Alternatively, successful treatments achieved through such support systems reduce health costs that implicate socioeconomic status of the nation. To illustrate the practical use of HIM, it is a common practice in many healthcare systems for the use of electronic medical record (EMR) systems (Open Clinical, 2005). The use of technology in the delivery of efficient models to handle clinical data is backed by several software innovations that integrate patients’ information making it easier to handle such information with high accuracy.

References

Diana, M., Khurshid, A., Luce, S. (2012). “Healthcare Information Exchange Matrix to Address Quality and Return on Investment,” Perspectives in Health Information Management (Summer 2012): 1-9.

Dimick, C. (2011). “Advancing Quality and Patient Safety Initiatives,” Journal of AHIM, Retrieved from HYPERLINK “http://journal.ahima.org/2011/08/01/advancing-quality-and-patient-safety-initiatives/” http://journal.ahima.org/2011/08/01/advancing-quality-and-patient-safety-initiatives/

Open Clinical (2005). “Electronic Media Records, Electronic Health Records,” Retrieved from HYPERLINK “http://www.openclinical.org/emr.html” http://www.openclinical.org/emr.html

Reynolds, R., Sharp, M., & Zheng, X. (2009). “Redefining the Roles of Health Information Management: Professionals in Health Information Technology,” Perspectives in Health Information Management, 6 (Summer 2009)