Importance Of Having A HIM Professional On The CPOE Project Team

Benefits of Including an HIM Professional in the CPOE Project Team

Discuss about the Proposal for having a HIM professional on the CPOE Project team.

It is a pleasant news that the facility has undertaken an overall Electronic Health Record (EHR) implementation strategy and has implemented a computerized ADT system. The successive phase would be the implementation of a CPOE (Computerized Provider Order Entry) system. It has been observed that the team members for the CPOE project have no representative from the Health Information Management (HIM) department. Against this context, I would like to explain all the benefits of having a HIM professional on the CPOE Project team.

The most important rationale for including a member of the HIM department is to ensure that a professional can manage the CPOE system for ensuring that legal, ethical and medical standards are maintained. Collection and analysis of patient data will be made easier if these professionals are present. The key job roles of such experts include maintaining the accuracy of patient records, establishing privacy of patient records, maintaining health databases and analysing records. Cost-efficient EHR practices can only be achieved if collaboration is established with HIM experts. The quality of CPOE implemented might be ineffective and disorganised in their absence. Fragmented delivery systems and information system restrictions are some of the major issues faced in EHR systems if experienced and skilled professionals are not handling them. HIM professionals have the exclusive knowledge and proficiency that when combined with executive teams of other professionals lead to advanced and safe care delivery (McWay, 2013).

As pointed out by Abdekhoda et al., (2014) extraction of data from EHR gives the opportunity to gather information by which needs of quality improvement can be indicated. If successful HIM practices are upheld, there would be a facilitation of data from a wide range of sources. This enables data capture that can be repurposed in several instances.  EHR comprises of data used for several purposes by healthcare professionals at different stages of patient care. Such data, therefore, needs to be overseen by professionals who make no mistakes in analysing them. HIM practices help in the process of maintaining data transparency through the promotion of a practice of adopting guidelines in place for data admittance, exercise, and control. The HIM professional would not be solely an outright information technologist but also help in increasing volumes of electronic heath data. The Canadian Health Information Management Association propagates the importance of the including a HIM professional in all healthcare systems. An increasing health care needs of the population together with aging population and a focus on efficiency, accountability and effectiveness of health care services delivery, compunds to be the reason for a skills shortage. Only a HIM professional would have marketable skills in the health information management sector and thus needs to be included in the team (echima.ca, 2017).

It is thereby proposed that the CPOE project must have at least two representatives from the HIM department. Selection can be done after conducting personal interviews and scrutiny of past experiences and credentials. A meeting can be conducted in following days that would discuss the details of the selection procedure for the appropriate candidate. Feedback from the concerned stakeholders would be important in this regard. Candidates can be selected on a temporary basis which can be renewed based on individual performances.

Looking forward to necessary actions taken in this regard. It is hoped that the  Happytown General Hospital would benefit immensely from this approach.

References

Abdekhoda, M., Ahmadi, M., Dehnad, A., & Hosseini, A. F. (2014). Information technology acceptance in health information management. Methods Inf Med, 53(1), 14-20.

McWay, D. C. (2013). Today's health information management: An integrated approach. Cengage Learning.      

The Canadian Health Information Management Association. (2017). echima.ca. Retrieved 5 September 2017, from https://www.echima.ca/home