Answering Questions On Health Information Management (Other (Not Listed) Sample)

HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
Name of Institution
Name of Student
Course
Date
PART 1
Question 1
The following are some of the primary roles of Health Information Management (HIM) professionals in the electronic health information systems.
* HIM professionals have the duty of ensuring the medical information on patients is secure and protected.
* HIM professionals have the role of patient identity management
* HIM professionals also have the duty of providing appropriate data and information to stakeholders in the healthcare sectors. Medical decisions by this information in the care time and place.
The adaptation of Electronic Health Record (EHR) exposes healthcare institutions to privacy issues. This is because the electronic exchange of patient’s medical records for access and use by other professionals expose the information to possible privacy breaches. Privacy when it comes to medical information has deep historical roots, and as the sector transition from paper records to electronic health information systems it is important to ensure that this tradition is kept(De Bord, Burke, & Dudzinski, 2017).
In addition to privacy being a tradition in the healthcare sector, it is also a constitutional right. As such it is important for the HIM professionals to ensure that patients are secure and protected otherwise, it would result in legal suits for the institution involved(Zeng, Reynolds, & Sharp, 2017). Issues of confidentiality, privacy, and security of patients’ information will always challenge the both the organization and HIM professionals. This is because both the institution and its electronic health information systems are constantly expanding and as such more data is been collected.
Consequently ensuring confidentiality, privacy and security of patients’ information get hard and almost impossible especially with the introduction of mobile health devices which enable remote access to paramedics and other outpatient caregivers. To deal with the issues of confidentiality, privacy and security of patients’ information HIM professionals have to develop policies and procedures related to the governance of the information. If the policies and procedures are implemented well, then the patient’s privacy rights are assured and as such the HIM professionals successfully perform one of their primary duties. The assurance ensures that patients and health care providers have a trusting environment hence efficiency in service delivery and quality(Zeng, Reynolds, & Sharp, 2017).
The second primary duty of HIM professionals is in patient identity management. This is a critical role of the HIM professionals since all information about a patient is not collected at one point but rather by a number of different systems within the healthcare organization capture patient information. To effectively manage patients’ identity HIM professionals need a patient identifier system like master patient index (MPI). Patient identifier systems ensure healthcare organizations have the ability to understand and accurately measure its patient population. This type of system holds information on all patients registered with a given medical care organization(Zeng, Reynolds, & Sharp, 2017).
Patient identifier system stores information such as; the patient name, their social security number, gender, race, date of birth, and place of residence, contact details, and the patient's medical history. This system reduces inefficiencies, duplicative care, medical errors and chances of care gives having incomplete information. This is because the system ensures that patients are only represented or registered only once and that the information used for demographic identification is constant in all systems within the organization. Consequently, this reduces the overall costs of healthcare while improving its quality and efficiency of delivery. This is because patients get accurate medical care(Rouse, 2017). In addition to this, the system enables the tracking of patients and other individuals’ activities within an organization and across patient care settings.
The second primary duty of HIM professionals is in ensuring Information interoperability. This is providing appropriate data and information to stakeholders in the healthcare sector to guide medical decisions in the care time and place. HIM professionals ensure there is information interoperability since they enable the movement and sharing of electronic health information. Under this role, HIM professionals have the mandate to ensure that electronic health information is available whenever and wherever needed within the institution and the whole industry as a whole. This role is patient oriented and is critical since it facilitates proper medical attention. While on a day to day basis this may not seem important it is core during bioterrorism surveillance, disaster management and other times when healthcare tracking is needed. Within the Health Information Technology community ensuring that information is available to the person who needs it at the time and place in which they need it can mean death or life for patients(Zeng, Reynolds, & Sharp, 2017). As such ensuring Information interoperability remains to be one of the most important roles of Health Information Management professionals in the electronic health information systems
Question 2
Of the roles identified in Question 1 above I feel that HIM professionals’ duty in ensuring the medical information on patients is secure and protected is the most important for the healthcare community. The success of the healthcare industry is built on the trust between patients and health care providers. As such it is of vital significance that privacy and confidentiality be assured. It is because of this trust that patients are able to share personal information with their health care provider, and it is this information that is used in the diagnosis and treatment. As such if the privacy and confidentiality of the information shared were not guaranteed the trust in the health care provider would be withdrawn by the patient. Other than confidentiality being a moral requirement on the part of health care provider it is also a legal requirement. According to the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act of 1997 (HIPAA), organizations in the healthcare industry are required to policies and procedures in place that protect and secure the privacy of patients information both electronic and otherwise. The policies mainly include procedures that govern computer and information access and security(De Bord, Burke, & Dudzinski, 2017).
Despite the fact that electronic medical record and the current trends in technology pose a great challenge to confidentiality. Organizations have to guarantee or promise privacy and confidentiality to its patients. This is because if this is not the case, patients will share less information specially the more sensitive and important information. This would impact the industry negatively since without all the information cases of misdiagnosis, duplicative care, and medical errors would increase due to incomplete information(De Bord, Burke, & Dudzinski, 2017). As such the ability of Health Information Management professionals in ensuring privacy and confidentiality in the electronic health information systems is important for the healthcare industry as a whole.
PART 2
Question 1
Define these EHR elements
DATA- as an electronic health information element data refers all numbers or text information that a patient inputs in the system. It constitutes plain facts about the patients. It includes; the patient’s name, their social security number, gender, race, date of birth, and place of residence, contact details, medications, allergies, universal patient identifier and their medical history.
CHARACTER- as an electronic health information element a character refers the single simplest unit of information that corresponds to existing graphene symbol like the alphabet of a written natural language. Examples include; numerical digits, letters and symbols like the punctuation mark.
FIELD – as an electronic health information element a field refers to data about the same patient that has been divided into several parts. For example when a patient is registering for the first time with the hospital the fields that require filling will include the patient’s...