By: Linda Kloss
The professional discipline of ROI has changed in the past two decades. Your job has changed. And, without a doubt, expectations around your performance have changed.
Once, ROI was a narrow hospital-centric workflow that could be outsourced and forgotten. No more. Now we are called upon to manage access and
disclosure across and beyond an entire healthcare enterprise – and in support of a mission-critical imperative of improving the patient experience.
3 major drivers
What is shaping the new HIM ecosystem?
- The rise of complex and community-wide health systems like Sutter Health in San Francisco, Partners Health in Boston and UPMC in Pittsburgh.
- Health information is no longer “at rest,” safely tucked away in the archives. Because it is now digitized, health information is in motion and in use, being reused, recombined, redisclosed.
- Patient-centeredness is no long a concept limited to direct patient care, but to all points where patients interact with a health system.
4 keys to transformation
You’re heard the old inspirational saying, “The bend in the road is not the end of the road…unless you fail to make the turn.” Fortunately, the past few years have seen the emergence of new tools and workflows that help you and your colleagues make this turn.
- Request apps help healthcare organizations increase the convenience for patients, accelerate the speed of request processing, and lower the cost for both patient and organization. New technologies empower patients – as well as other authorized requestors – to submit requests from their computer or smart phone.
- Automation allows healthcare organizations to centralize and standard disclosure management processes. The old playbook – where processes across ambulatory, acute care, home care and the ED were fragmented – increased cost and compliance risk.
- Auditing and analytics are now valued as critical to effective and efficient access and disclosure management processes. New tools streamline workflows, quality assurance and reporting so leaders can monitor compliance and performance issues.
- Accountability is a critical component. Work flow technology should help people do the right thing at the right time. And it should produce a record of the work performed for accountability and as a teaching tool to improve the productivity and skill of access and disclosure staff.
Of course, any transformative effort requires more than can be contained in a simple 400-word blog. If you are going to AHIMA next week, look me up for a deeper conversation. I will be at the Verisma booth #403 and will deliver a presentation on this topic at 2:30 p.m. – 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 25.