What is Healthcare Information Management?
Healthcare information management is the collection, protection, and analysis of patient health information to ensure the quality and availability of the patient health information while complying with legal requirements and organizational policies. The ultimate purpose of healthcare information management is to improve the healthcare experience from initial consultation to insurance claim.
Healthcare information management is an evolving field in healthcare that combines data, information technology, and compliance. It can play an important role in ensuring healthcare providers and healthcare payers have accurate, timely, and secure access to patient health information within the boundaries set by healthcare regulations and organizational policies.
The implementation of a healthcare information system can streamline administrative tasks, reduce the waste and duplication of resources, and contribute to the efficient delivery of healthcare. Depending on the infrastructure of the system, healthcare information management can also support medical research initiatives, public health policy making, and health services planning.
The Key Components of a Healthcare Information Management System
The key components of a healthcare information management system can vary according to an organization’s technological maturity. For example, the following list of components includes interoperable EHRs and electronic Health Information Exchanges, whereas some organizations may still have a high reliance on paper records or operate a hybrid system of paper and digital records.
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Electronic Health Records (EHRs)
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are digital versions of patients’ paper charts. They contain each patient’s medical history, diagnoses, medications, treatment plans, immunization dates, allergies, radiology images, test results and more. Interoperable EHRs connect with other digital solutions to make information available instantly and securely to authorized users and to support data analysis.
Electronic Health Information Exchanges (HIEs)
Electronic Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) allow doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other health care providers to securely share and appropriately access Protected Health Information (PHI) electronically – significantly enhancing the completeness of patients’ health records and improving the speed, quality, safety, and cost of patient care.
Medical Coding and Classification Systems
Medical coding classification systems are groups of codes that correspond to individual procedures and diagnoses. They are most often used in healthcare transactions for claims and reimbursements, but may also be used to track information about diseases and health conditions, for the statistical analysis of diseases and procedures, and to support incident response systems.
Data Analysis and Reporting
Data analysis involves the inspection, cleaning, transformation, and modeling of data to discover useful information, suggest conclusions, and support decision-making. In healthcare information management, data analysis and reporting is used for tasks such as predicting patient outcomes, improving the quality of care, and optimizing the allocation of healthcare resources.
The Challenges of Implementing an Information Management System
As with the key components of a healthcare management information system, the challenges of implementing an information management system can vary according to an organization’s technical maturity and the resources available to the organization. However, in most cases, there are three primary challenges to implementing an information management system – security, skills, and cost.
The security of PHI has to be maintained when data is transmitted within an internal network or to an external system. It also have to be secured at rest within internal networks and internal systems, and this appears to be a significant problem for many healthcare organizations considering the tens of thousands of data breaches that are notified to HHS’ Office for Civil Rights each year.
One of the reasons for the volume of data breaches is that there is a shortage of skilled security professionals. Within this shortage, there is a lack of health informatics professionals with the necessary knowledge to secure PHI in such a way that it is available on demand to doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other health care providers via an electronic Health Information Exchange.
Finally, the cost of the resources required to implement an information management system can be hard to justify when there is no way to measure the return on investment. Although many organizations may have the individual components of a healthcare information management system, getting them to communicate with each other can be operationally disruptive and resource intensive.
Overcoming the Challenges with Information Management Software
Information management software is the latest evolution of the hospital management systems that started to appear in the US in the 1950s and 1960s. Now driven by AI and machine learning, and benefiting from technologies such as blockchain, interoperable information management software is more secure than its predecessors, easier to use, and inexpensive to deploy.
While there may still be some operational disruption during the implementation of a modern healthcare information management system, most healthcare organizations should be able to identify benefits such as fewer adverse medical events and security incidents attributable to human error, improved collaboration between healthcare teams, and better revenue management.
