Question

Q1: Define the role of health information management department in a health care facility and explain five responsibilities of health information management. (2 marks + 5 marks)

2- Responsibilities of Health Information Management:

3- Describe the role of the Health Information Management Department in a health care facility, and discuss the development of the HIM profession in the UAE (6 lines only) (3 + 5 marks)

4- Name and compare the credentials offered at preprofessional level of health information management.

5- What is the e-HIM initiative?   

Answer 1

1.Define the role of health information management department in a health care facility and explain five responsibilities of health information management.

answer:

The role of health information management department in a health care facility is discussed below.

The role of the Health information management department in a healthcare facility can be defined as its role to procure the patient medical data/ health record and patient information ,store the data safely either as the traditional paper records or electronic health records , setup and maintain clinical data bases,analyze the data and protect the patient data ensuring privacy of patient's health information and health records.

Patient's health data and the medical reports form a clinical database on which the entire medical treatment of the patient is based and the healthcare industry is rooted upon. This data is vast ,important and critical to the patient care as well as for purposes of study or research The management of this data comes under the purview of health information management department.The chief role of Health Information management department is to obtain,maintain and safely secure the patient data, analyze the data and ensure patient privacy.

The  five responsibilities of health information management with explanation are listed below:

The health information management deals with a lot of patient data and has the following responsibilities as a part of its functional basis.

1.Clinical responsibility:The responsibility to ensure organized maintenance of the electronic and the traditional handwritten medical records,ensure their accuracy and completeness and make them available for medical care use/ physician use whenever required to enable the smooth functioning of the healthcare organization and provide quality patient care delivery The health information management department stores the patient data carefully and systematically as clinical databases.

2. Responsibility towards patient: The health information management department has the responsibility towards the patient in that it has to ensure safe storage of the patient's data and make the data available to the patient as per patient's request/needs and to ensure patient privacy protection by safeguarding the patient's personal data and the patient health records.

3.Financial responsibility: Healthcare information management department provides the records database for the coding of the patient procedure and their clinical diagnosis, billing purposes, insurance data, reimbursement data /physician payment data. It thus plays a major role to ensure the smooth financial operation in the the healthcare facility..

4. Epidemiological /demographic data providing responsibility : The healthcare and patient medical records are required for the study of epidemiological data in infectious/chronic diseases/research purposes as well as for the demographic analysis.For this to be  effective,the data must be organized and analyzed properly The health information management department has the responsibility towards maintaining clinical database ,organizing the data and medical records systematically and to be able to provide data for the purposes of research ,demographic analysis and epidemiological analysis as may be required by the medical/paramedical professionals in the healthcare facility.

5.Legal and administrative responsibility : The health information management has legal responsibility of safely securing, storing and providing the data as and when required by law or the administrative authorities as commonly seen in cases of trauma, .drunken driving. in the elderly or child abuse,medical negligence and medical errors.It is also useful to obtain the data pertaining to the patient load, the patient turnover rate ,bed occupancy rate and other data that are relevant to the administrative functioning of the healthcare facility.

Additionally.

6.Operational and training responsibilities: The health information management department has the responsibility to effectively use the health Informatics and health information technology for the proving the data storage,for data analytics, the transition from the traditional handwritten medical records into the electronic medical records thereby improving the operational efficiency of the health record management

Health information management department also has a responsibility to ensure the continued training of their professionals involved in order to keep them updated with the latest in the field of  health Informatics.

2- Responsibilities of Health Information Management:

Introduction:The responsibility of health information management is to collect,manage ,electronize and ,analyze the data regarding the patient's health/medical records/patient's care with efficacy and efficiency.

The health information management plays a chief role to procure the patient medical data/ health record and patient information ,store the data safely either as the traditional paper records or electronic health records , setup and maintain clinical data bases,analyze the data and protect the patient data ensuring privacy of patient's health information and health records.

The responsibilities of the health information management are multifold and play a crucial role in the effective functioning of the healthcare organizations.The health information management is responsible for collecting ,storing the patent data and ensuring its completeness and accuracy.Health information management also has a responsibility to maintain clinical databases by compiling the patient's medical records and clinical data,It  also has a responsibility towards the patient to provide him/her the data or medical records when needed ,secure patients records ensuring total patient privacy .The health information management has to manage the data effectively by compiling and analyzing it so as to be able to provide the data for the purposes of research study and epidemiological/demographic purposes. The responsibility of the health information management is also to provide the data in organized form so that the coding of the medical procedures, the medical diagnosis, medical billing, insurance claim settlement ,reimbursement bill settlement ,patient billing all can be effected smoothly and the financial operations in the institution simplified.

It is the responsibility of the health information management to incorporate the health Informatics and health information technology systems in the field of the health information management in order to be able to provide electronization of the records and data organization in a computerized form. For this purpose, the regular training of the professionals involved and regular knowledge upgradation to the latest in health Informatics is very important. It is also the responsibility of the health information management to provide data for legal purposes as may be required by the law of the state and provide data for administrative purposes of the healthcare organization.

Summary:The responsibilities of the health information management are multifold and play a crucial role in quality healthcare delivery.