It is time to make the case for health information management (HIM) to be included in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. A careful review of the HIM competencies approved by the American Health Information Management Association illustrates the role of HIM professionals in informatics, data analytics, and data use.
The purpose of this survey was to understand the perceptions and educational goals of the health information management (HIM) workforce in regard to pursuing doctoral-level degrees. Survey data were collected from members of AHIMA to gain further insight into their interest in pursuing a doctoral degree, their reasons for obtaining such a degree, their methods of learning, and their financial support for an advanced degree. Descriptive characteristics were collected from AHIMA profile information.
The purpose of this study was to craft a predictive model to examine the relationship between grades in specific academic courses, overall grade point average (GPA), on-campus versus online course delivery, and success in passing the Registered Health Information Administrator (RHIA) exam on the first attempt. Because student success in passing the exam on the first attempt is assessed as part of the accreditation process, this study is important to health information management (HIM) programs.
Evolving economic and technological advances have affected the work environment and the workforce, resulting in new competency requirements for employees. Finding the right person for each job can be difficult, and new hires often fail to meet employers’ expectations. This study examined employers’ definitions of competency, instances of successful and unsuccessful hiring, and importance placed on industry credentials/certifications versus educational degrees.
Concern is growing among industry leaders that students may not be obtaining the necessary skills for entry into the labor market. To gain an understanding of the perceived disconnect in the skill set of graduates entering the health information workforce, a survey was developed to examine the opinions of educators and employers related to graduate preparedness.
This study examined how health information management (HIM) educational programs can use the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Model (MBNQAM) educational criteria to meet the self-assessment requirement for Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education (CAHIIM) accreditation.
The federal government advocates the practice of routinely providing an after-visit summary (AVS) to patients after each office-based visit as an element of stage 1 meaningful use. A significant potential benefit of the AVS is improved patient engagement achieved by enabling patients and family members to better understand and retain key health information. The methodology for this study was a mixed-methods pilot study to examine, through the perspectives of adult primary care patients, how relevant and actionable data can be better formatted in the AVS.
Undergraduate students’ progress toward achievement of learning outcomes and entry-level competencies is an essential ingredient in efforts to meet the needs of the evolving national healthcare information infrastructure. Therefore, studies to evaluate variance in outcome assessment methods and perceived adequacy of educational curricula used by health information management (HIM) programs are vital. This study examined perceptions of HIM students, faculty, and individuals employed in healthcare regarding educational experiences and career preparation.
Documentation of the care delivered to hospitalized patients is a ubiquitous and important aspect of medical care. The majority of references to documentation and coding are based on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Group (MS-DRG) inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS). We educated the members of a clinical care team in a single department (neurosurgery) at our hospital. We measured subsequent documentation improvements in a simple, meaningful, and reproducible fashion.
The transition to ICD-10-CM/PCS has expanded educational opportunities for educators and trainers who are taking on the responsibility of training coders on the new system. Coding education currently faces multiple challenges in the areas of how to train the new workforce, what might be the most efficient method of providing that training, how much retraining of the current workforce with ICD-9-CM training will be required, and how to meet the national implementation deadline of 2014 in the most efficacious manner. This research sought to identify if there was a difference between a group of participants with no knowledge of ICD-9-CM and those with some knowledge of ICD-9-CM in scores on an ICD-10-CM/PCS quiz.
The astonishing improvement of high-throughput biotechnologies in recent years makes it possible to access a huge amount of genomic data. The association between genomic data and genetic disease has already been and will continue to be applied to personalized healthcare. Health information management (HIM) professionals are the ones who will handle personal genetic information and provide solid evidence to support physicians’ diagnoses and personalized treatment strategies, and therefore they will need to have the knowledge and skills to process genomic data.
As the health information management (HIM) profession continues to expand and become more specialized, there is an ever-increasing need to identify emerging HIM workforce roles that require a codified level of proficiency and professional standards. The Commission on Certification for Health Informatics and Information Management (CCHIIM) explored one such role—clinical documentation improvement (CDI) practitioner—to define the tasks and responsibilities of the job as well as the knowledge required to perform them effectively.
