11 KPIs for Measuring Health Information Management Department Success

11 KPIs for Measuring Health Information Management Department Success

Jul 2, 2025 | Blog, Operational Outcomes

July 2, 2025

11 KPIs for Measuring Health Information Management Department Success

In the healthcare industry, key performance indicators (KPI) and data analysis are critical to ensuring organizations stay on track to meet strategic goals. As one comprehensive case study shows, analyzing the right KPIs and effectively communicating them to other stakeholders can help create trusted healthcare benchmarks, emphasize the value of the health information management department, and develop staff pride in their performance. 

In fact, KPIs can help organizations measure and improve the quality of care delivered, while providing key insights for boosting revenue integrity, operational efficiency, and so much more.  

But determining what kind of data to collect can be difficult for many organizations, particularly amid staffing challenges and fast-paced environments. Here are 11 well-defined performance measures that every health information management department should monitor. 

1. Data Accuracy and Completeness 

This metric accounts for the percentage of errors or incomplete data present in patient records. Data accuracy KPIs could include the frequency of patient name misspellings, date of birth transpositions, or missing addresses.  

Why It Matters

Accurate and complete data contributes to robust data analytics and accurate coding for healthcare. It also helps prevent duplicate records and enables efficient health information exchange (HIE). Errors and omissions — particularly those that can occur during data migration, as discussed in a blog on the Olah website — may lead to inaccurate conclusions, mistrust, and poorly informed decisions. 

2. Data Accessibility and Availability 

Data accessibility refers to the amount of time it takes for a provider or staff member to access data — including legacy data — in the electronic health record (EHR). Examples of this metric include the time it takes to access data, the data request success rate, the data discoverability score, metadata completeness, platform uptime, and EHR time per patient. 

Why It Matters

Data accessibility is a critical metric that can help an organization identify lag time or bottlenecks that impact providers’ ability to spend quality time with their patients. Promoting efficient access to EHR data, including archived data, at the point of care supports patient safety and high-quality patient care.

3. Turnaround Time for Information Requests 

Turnaround time accounts for the amount of time it takes a covered entity — or a business associate working on its behalf — to share information in the EHR with individuals or their personal representatives.  

By law, covered entities must provide access to protected health information (PHI) within 30 calendar days from receiving the individual’s request. This metric helps an organization evaluate whether they’re meeting that requirement or not. It can also include the average turnaround time for data requests, first response time, or response time service level agreement compliance. 

Why It Matters

Providers can be fined for not complying with timely access requirements under HIPAA. Providing individuals with easy access to their health information empowers them to be more in control of decisions related to their health and well-being. Timely responses are also important in terms of maintaining positive patient relationships.   

4. Medical Coding Accuracy 

This metric helps organizations evaluate the percentage of incorrectly coded diagnoses and procedures, which can impact both revenue cycle management and patient care. This category of KPIs includes each department’s coding accuracy rate, coding error rate, correct DRG rate, audit pass rate, and denial rate due to coding. 

Why It Matters

Coding for healthcare requires precision. Coded data drives clinical care, payment, research, and more. It’s important to assign accurate and complete medical codes to promote data and revenue integrity.  

5. Regulatory Standards Compliance

For operational and finance teams, this metric is particularly critical. It accounts for the number of errors resulting in fees, HIPAA violations, or regulatory violations. That could include the number of data breaches reported, medication error rate, or the frequency of overbilling incidents. 

Why It Matters

Over time, healthcare regulatory compliance fees and violations create an enormous financial burden. They can also jeopardize patient safety and cause reputational harm. This KPI can help organizations identify and rectify costly errors related to federal, state, or local regulations to preserve revenue integrity. 

6. Patient Privacy and Data Security Incident Rate 

Patient privacy is crucial not only to protecting patients as they move through the healthcare system but also to avoiding costly, disruptive, and time-consuming noncompliance situations. This KPI focuses on the number of attempted and/or successful data breaches over a specific period, which can include metrics such as incident rate, time to detect, time to respond, volume of data exposed, or policy violation rate. 

Why It Matters

Monitoring these metrics helps healthcare organizations avoid costly data breaches that may require compliance with breach notification requirements, participation in a resolution agreement with the Office for Civil Rights, and payment of a civil monetary penalty. These KPIs help ensure data protection, compliance, and operational stability. 

7. Record Retention Compliance 

Record retention compliance refers to the number of times a hospital doesn’t adhere to state-specific record retention guidelines. Metrics under this category could include retention compliance rate, the volume of records past retention, record retention audit findings, and user adherence rate. 

Why It Matters

Retaining records according to state requirements is important for legal compliance, such as in the event of an investigation, audit, or lawsuit. It can also be crucial for continuity of care, public health and research, and healthcare regulatory compliance with patient access requirements. Monitoring relevant health information management department KPIs ensures organizations can provide the best possible patient care and defend themselves in legal matters.   

8. EHR Utilization Rate 

EHR utilization rate is the number of individual organizations or staff members who use the systemwide EHR for their work. There are several metrics under this category, including EHR log-in frequency (especially during patient visits), chart completion time, note completion rate, inbox management time, clinical decision support engagement, order entry rate, and use of templates or smart phrases.  

Why It Matters

These metrics help healthcare organizations pinpoint areas for EHR enhancements to ease the burden on physicians and improve patient care. They also ensure providers can use EHRs for patient care coordination, operational efficiency, and healthcare regulatory compliance.  

9. Medical Chart Abstraction Timeliness 

Providers and staff need efficient ways to access data, as tracking information down manually can be time-consuming. This KPI accounts for the amount of time it takes for a staff member to extract specific data from a medical record.  

Examples of this metric category include turnaround time from chart availability to completion of abstraction, medical chart abstraction completeness rate, medical chart abstraction accuracy rate, medical chart abstraction error rate, and charts abstracted per hour or day. 

Why It Matters

Monitoring these KPIs helps healthcare organizations promote timely clinical decision making, billing, and data submission. It also helps organizations track health outcomes, identify trends for improvement, and support population health efforts. 

10. Cost per Medical Record Processed 

This finance-oriented KPI is the dollar amount per record associated with ensuring payment for services rendered. It includes several key metrics, including the cost to collect, the total cost of collections, and the total cash collected. 

Why It Matters

These health information management department KPIs are important because they measure the efficiency of a healthcare organization in collecting the money it’s owed. By analyzing this data, organizations can identify where they might be losing money to inefficiencies or errors. 

11. Revenue Cycle Efficiency 

While there are a number of KPIs related to revenue, this one focuses on how quickly a healthcare organization can collect money owed. In short, it measures an organization’s financial efficiency and cash flow. Specific metrics under this category include accounts receivable days, write-off rate, net collection rate, claim denial rate, first pass resolution rate, bad debt rate, and patient collections. 

Why It Matters

Revenue cycle management is critical to any healthcare organization, as it can impact the organization’s ability to retain staff, effectively care for patients, and maintain financial sustainability. Monitoring these KPIs helps healthcare organizations pinpoint areas for revenue cycle improvement that can enhance cash flow and promote long-term financial stability.  

Leveraging Health Information Management To Support Data Efforts 

Tracking the right KPIs helps maintain the efficiency, security, and profitability of a healthcare organization. Poor data quality, subpar data protection, and data inaccessibility undermine efforts to improve performance.  

That’s why it’s important for health information management departments to set the stage for success. Regularly monitoring and analyzing the right KPIs can improve care, enhance operational efficiency, and ensure compliance with healthcare regulations. Working with a strategic partner like Verisma can help you zero in on how to identify and use insights from that information to improve your HIM operations. Contact us today to learn more.  

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7 Ways Health Information Management Professionals Can Enhance Their Impact

7 Ways Health Information Management Professionals Can Enhance Their Impact

May 23, 2025 | Blog

May 21, 2025

As today’s hospital leaders look for ways to effectively manage healthcare data, they’re increasingly turning to health information management (HIM) professionals for valuable insights. As stewards of patient health information (PHI) and data, these professionals are often responsible for managing data from end to end, including collecting, storing, and sharing it with the organization. 

As a health information management professional, you possess technical and analytical skills that enable you to play a critical role in protecting data, ensuring its accuracy so your organization can use it effectively, and streamlining workflows so stakeholders from clinicians to administrative staff have the information they need, when they need it. 

But while your reach can be extensive, focusing on key priorities can help you maximize your impact. Here’s a look at seven ways you can best support your health system.  

1. Provide Leaders With Accurate Data for Decision-Making 

Health information management professionals are well-positioned to validate and interpret patient data because they understand why and how it’s captured.  

You and your team recognize how clinical documentation translates to the coded data necessary for clinical decision support, operational efficiency, financial management, population health management, and treatment personalization.  

By providing organized, accessible data to your organization, you can help transform how teams interpret and apply that information. Armed with accurate and complete data, hospital leaders, clinicians, and others can identify patterns, uncover insights, and make evidence-based decisions to drive better patient outcomes.  

2. Evaluate AI-Driven Solutions for Efficiency and Cost Effectiveness 

HIM professionals assist hospital leaders in balancing innovation with budget constraints. Not every new project or technology is cost effective, nor is it right for every organization. But by understanding vendor offerings and leveraging data to evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of new technologies — including clinical information systems — you can help your leaders make the right investments at the right time. 

For instance, you can provide financial data to ensure that expenditures on clinical data management software and other artificial intelligence (AI)-driven solutions align with business objectives. Or you can help measure the potential impact of these solutions on patient care and operational efficiency. Using your health information management skills, you can explore cost-effective clinical data management software solutions and establish metrics to monitor ongoing performance.  

3. Streamline Real-Time End-User PHI Access 

Individuals with health information management skills help organizations implement systems that improve immediate access to personal health information (PHI), which can help boost clinical and operational outcomes, according to the American Hospital Association. 

Your team’s extensive experience with clinical and administrative workflows — coupled with their knowledge of HIPAA regulations — makes them ideal experts to reduce bottlenecks in data retrieval and ensure data accessibility that doesn’t compromise security.  

When exploring different clinical information systems, for example, your team of health information management professionals can ensure the system chosen displays relevant data that clinicians need to assess and treat each patient on a single, customizable dashboard. Similarly, you and your team know the warning signs of when it’s time to archive EHR data and can sound the alarms before a lack of access to healthcare data becomes problematic. 

4. Increase Interoperability  

Integrating different healthcare systems and software can be challenging for any healthcare organization. But with extensive knowledge of standardized data formats and communication protocols, health information management professionals can help organizations overcome these difficulties. 

Your team specializes in data exchange procedures, which is critical for any technology integration. As such, you can improve data exchange between departments and external providers by advocating for the adoption of technology that uses universal data standards (e.g., Health Level 7, Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, and Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine standards) and application programming interfaces (APIs).  

You can also help ensure your organization complies with government regulations to enforce interoperability. With interoperable systems, your organization can communicate, share, and use patient data efficiently across various platforms to coordinate care, promote patient safety, enhance operational efficiency, and increase patient engagement.   

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5. Keep Pace With New Security Standards and Regulations 

As health information management professionals, it’s you and your team’s responsibility to stay on top of ever-evolving data management compliance requirements. That expertise puts you in the perfect position to quickly identify best practices for protecting patient data from breaches and cyber threats, including ransomware, insider threats, device and network vulnerabilities, and cloud security risks.  

These best practices include: 

  • Archiving data in legacy systems
  • Implementing strong access controls
  • Ensuring data encryption
  • Performing security audits and vulnerability assessments
  • Creating backup and disaster recovery plans
  • Providing employee training and security awareness programs 

As HIPAA experts, your team can also help prepare your organization for proposed HIPAA changes that include enhanced PHI access for patients, new cybersecurity standards, and more. 

6. Ensure Accurate Documentation to Support Better Care and Outcomes  

Accurate data is crucial to not only making informed decisions, but also enhancing billing, compliance, and quality reporting. Health information management professionals play a key role in educating physicians and staff about best practices for keeping data accurate and up to date.  

For example, implementing guardrails such as real-time data validation, automated data cleansing tools, and machine learning anomaly-detection tools can help you reduce documentation errors that impact patient care in your organization. 

By employing your health information management skills, you can help mitigate the risks of incomplete data, duplicate records, and outdated information, as well as leverage technologies like templates, AI tools, and physician-assisted documentation to improve documentation efficiency.  

7. Understand End Users’ Needs and Concerns 

Possessing keen insights into administrative and clinical information systems, your team of health information management professionals can easily identify pain points in existing or new applications and engage clinicians and administrative staff to improve workflows.  

Consider identifying and implementing strategies to streamline and automate manual administrative tasks, such as: 

  • Helping your organization go paperless to automate clinical and administrative workflow bottlenecks 
  • Capturing clinical and administrative data prior to appointments 
  • Leveraging AI to reduce the physician clinical documentation burden 
  • Ensuring clinical decision support systems integrate into the clinician’s workflow 

By providing training and support focused on technical skills and change management strategies, you can also ensure smooth technology adoption. 

Other important contributions? Your team can provide valuable end-user insights during legacy data migration projects and ask important operational questions when converting and transferring healthcare data from one system to another to ensure success.  

The Foundation for Better Data Management 

Health information management professionals are more than data managers. They’re regulatory experts, decision-making guides, documentation optimizers, and so much more.  

By prioritizing the key areas that make the biggest impact on your organization, you can help leaders successfully manage the data lifecycle. 

Learn how Verisma’s data archiving solution, Olah™, can augment these efforts, providing a new and better way to archive and access legacy health information.

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Verisma Reports Record Growth in 2017

Dec 19, 2017 | News, Uncategorized, Verisma Company Updates

Disclosure Management leader expands footprint; builds development, quality, service teams

 

ALEXANDRIA, VA. – Dec. 19, 2017 – Verisma Systems, Inc. will post a 60 percent increase in new client acquisitions for 2017, according to CEO Marty McKenna. The company likewise reports 98 percent client retention.

To support ongoing growth and ensure an exceptional client experience, Verisma significantly increased staff this year.

“It has been an incredible year for us,” McKenna says. “We are grateful to our long-standing clients for their loyalty and excited to welcome so many new organizations—including several large, complex health systems – to the Verisma family.”

The growth can be attributed to Verisma’s commitment to technology-assisted disclosure management across the health enterprise, McKenna adds. “We’ve automated and added quality control to a highly manual process. Our technology streamlines the release-of-information process, supports a stronger revenue cycle, and increases both staff and patient satisfaction.”

The company’s flagship product, Verisma Release Manager™ (VRM), delivers next-generation technology with highly trained teams of release of information (ROI), IT, legal and business experts to facilitate the secure electronic exchange of patient information. It features integrated HIPAA guidance and compliance review support, as well as an advanced workflow engine, quality assurance to reduce errors, and an analytics dashboard for full transparency and accountability into the ROI process.

Fueling the company’s success this year was the expansion of Verisma Request Application™ (VRA), a self-service solution that enables patients and proxies to request medical records online, and the introduction of Verisma Spotlight™. Enhanced VRA functionality allows internal requestors, commercial health plans and attorneys to benefit from convenient self-service options. Spotlight helps clients respond effectively to requests for protected health information that might pose a risk to their organizations – court-ordered subpoenas, for example, which often represent tight turnaround times.

To support its rapid growth, Verisma expanded its development, client services and quality assurance teams in recent months as well. The company anticipates adding 55 percent more associates by early 2018.

Verisma’s progress has likewise enabled the company to support clients by engaging with industry leaders, adds McKenna. Linda Kloss MA, RHIA, FAHIMA, president of Kloss Strategic Advisors and former CEO of AHIMA, serves at the company’s strategic advisor, for example, and Deven McGraw, former deputy director for health information privacy at the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR), was featured as the keynote speaker at Verisma’s Disclosure Management Summit in May 2017.

“These relationships allow us to share insights into industry trends,” McKenna says. “Plus, they open doors for clients to learn about best practices and how to earn a seat at the table when their organizations consider the future of health information management.”

About Verisma

Verisma is a health information technology provider focused on delivering unparalleled Disclosure Management solutions to the healthcare industry. The company’s flagship automation system, Verisma® Release Manager (VRM), is utilized by well-known healthcare organizations nationwide. VRM automates workflow to improve turnaround times, reduce errors and drive down costs – effectively automating medical records release while delivering comprehensive release audit capabilities. It is the only release technology with integrated HIPAA guidance and compliance review support. For additional information, please visit our website at www.verisma.com, call 866-390-7404 or email solutions@verisma.com.

Media Contact:

Elizabeth Glaser

Phone (770) 317-8831

Elizabeth@verisma.com

WEBINAR: Saint Luke’s Health System: Transforming ROI From Siloed to Enterprise-Wide Function

Nov 6, 2017 | Uncategorized

Date: December 13th, 2017 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm EST

Presenters:

Heidi Hale, RHIA, Release of Information Manager, Saint Luke’s Health System

Linda Kloss, MA, RHIA, President, Kloss Strategic Advisors, Inc.

Today, Release of Information (ROI) practices are inconsistent in many health system areas. Hospital ROI may be uniform and compliant; however, ambulatory, home care, and other settings use inconsistent, ad hoc methods. These siloed ROI practices are risky and costly. With growing volumes and request types, reduced revenue, and new compliance risks, fragmented ROI is no longer adequate. Health systems need a solution that automates ROI across the enterprise.

During this presentation, Heidi Hale, Release of Information Manager at Saint Luke’s Health System and Linda Kloss, President of Kloss Strategic Advisors will provide a real world example of how HIM spearheaded a successful ROI transformation project, migrating from fragmented to unified in less than a year.

Join the webinar to learn how the HIM department led:

  • The successful migration from siloed to enterprise ROI in a compressed timeframe
  • The automation of their ROI workflow and aligned people, policy, processes, and technology across the enterprise
  • The expansion of secure patient access to health data – while advancing compliance with the 2016 HHS Patient Access guidance and Saint Luke’s goals and values
  • An effective cross-functional team collaboration and initiative to advance system-level change

Approved for 1 AHIMA CEU Credit: Management Development

 

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Enterprise ROI Improves Customer Satisfaction

Oct 24, 2017 | Blog, Information Sharing, Uncategorized

Exploring Driver #5 of the “5 Things You Must Know Now About Release of Health Information”

By: Linda Kloss, MA, RHIA, FAHIMA

People are becoming better informed about their rights and the value of information to inform health and healthcare decisions.   Increase in personal health spending is one reason consumers are becoming better informed.  So is the growing understanding that it’s wise to be knowledgeable and involved in one’s health and healthcare decisions.  Release of Information (ROI) teams see this trend firsthand with the growing number of requests for records from patients.

ROI is on the front line in helping patients become smart health information consumers. Patient requests will continue to increase and they will expect a reasonable customer service experience in requesting and obtaining records.  Those responsible for ROI should be monitoring changing requirements, exploring best practices and planning for innovation in a future-focused way.

Earlier blogs examined the value of standardizing ROI across the health care enterprise to improve quality and compliance.  Enterprise ROI also improves customer satisfaction and contributes to an organization’s patient engagement objectives.   Regardless of whether the patient initiates a request at the physician’s office or hospital, the request process should be the same and the patient should be able to secure the requested information without going from site to site.  Verisma clients are realizing quantifiable improvement in customer satisfaction, improved compliance, accuracy, and cost management by deploying ROI technology and consistent policy and process across the enterprise.   If full standardization is not possible for your organization, use ROI technology to unify the process as fully as possible and plan to further centralize over time.

The next wave of innovation will be self-service functionality enabling patients and other authorized requestors to request medical records via web at their convenience.  There will be no need to stand in line or to fill out a paper form.  Done well, self-service request apps use state of the art security, identity verification, and preserve a record of transactions.  As with enterprise ROI, Verisma clients are now introducing self-service into ROI thereby helping patients gain access to health information while also stepping up security and accountability.

Patients may want ease of access to their information, but they don’t want to trade off their privacy rights to gain it.  Recent research found that 49% of US online adults are concerned about the privacy of their healthcare information when using on line tools.[1]  On line request apps must meet HIPAA requirements and maintain a high bar for identity management and the accommodation of patients’ disclosure preferences. If implemented properly, request apps can help educate patients in the exercise of their rights process.  ROI teams can do a great deal to help educate patients about their rights, and a valuable source of educational materials is with HHS.[2] Proactive education about privacy rights and your organization’s practices benefits all.

HIM managers should evaluate the request process from the patients’ perspective.

  1. What data are available on volume of requests at various provider settings across the network?
  2. How similar or dissimilar is the patient experience at various settings?
  3. How does staff in various settings respond to a set of “test” questions that patients might pose that require working knowledge of HIPAA privacy regulations?
  4. How can customer facing processes be improved through greater standardization, through technology, education and request apps?

This is our final post in the “5 Things You Must Know Now About Release of Health Information” series.  Should you have any comments or questions please e-mail us at solutions@verisma.com.

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[1] Khatibloo, F., Forester Research in testimony before the NCVHS, September 13, 2017, (https://www.ncvhs.hhs.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Sep-13-@115pm-Khatibloo-Beyond-HIPAA-Statement.pdf)

[2] Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-individuals/guidance-materials-for-consumers/index.html)