Service Quality in Health Information Management



Service Quality in Health Information Management

Introduction

Quality of care in healthcare industry is more than just a concept. Quality of care in healthcare has become an essential thing for financial survival and most importantly for well being of patients. There is variety of meanings of quality in healthcare (Palmer, 1991). To some people, setting for a short time in waiting room to see doctor means quality, polite treatment by staff and doctor mean quality and there are people who define quality by how much time is devoted by doctor to example a person. In order to provide quality service to patients all areas of health care industry needs to understand the important to their responsibilities towards patients, their work, and especially whole human kind. There are many departments involved in providing quality care to patients out of whom a major role is played by Health information department. HIM department is involved in processing and providing health records of the patients. These records contain information of patients extending from pre admission through discharge and afterwards until that record is complete. The day after discharge or the date of service, all medical records of the patients are received by HIM department. This is done to finalize records processing in timely fashion (LaTour, 2006).

It is a department that includes specially trained technicians. These technicians can be found in clinics, hospitals, nursing homes, insurance firms, physician's offices, and public health agencies (Stansfield, 2005). By collecting, analyzing, and maintain health information, professionals of HIM department makes a significant contribution in delivering quality of care. In this paper I am going to discuss staff's issues in Health information management department of ABC outpatient clinic. After discussing the problems with the staff of the department some recommendations shall be given to enhance the quality of services and remove conflicts between entire staff (Employee and physicians) in ABD outpatient clinic. The purpose of writing this paper is to let readers know about the importance of quality service to the patients and its impact on the development of healthcare organization (ABC outpatient clinic). In addition this study will let readers know about certain issues faced by staff of ABC outpatient clinic and how they can be resolved in effective manner.

Brief Background

There is a Health Information Department of ABC outpatient clinic whose supervisor (me) is receiving frequent and intense complaints regarding the delay in health records retrieval, rudeness of HIM staff and some other problems that are eventually causing problems to other employees in executing their activities. When I talked to the staff of the HIM department I found their stories are just as negative. However being supervisor of the HIM department I have to deal with these issues and make the staff work and provide quality services that eventually will help other members of the clinic to provide quality care to patients (CIVIL, 2000).

Solutions

Today, there no more challenging environment than ever changing environment of healthcare. With growing volume of the data ...