Assignment Instructions
Identify an acute care facility and a non-acute health care facility in your area. If possible, arrange to speak to the health information management professional at each facility and discuss the challenges they feel they face in collecting data, the type of data they are responsible for collecting, what their job duties are, and what type of patients they provide care. Assess and relate the outcome of the interview to the material explored in the Readings.
These following level heading might be useful in organizing your paper
- Introduction
- Acute Care Data
- Type of Data
- Challenges
- HIM Responsibilities
- Non Acute Care
- Type of Data
- Challenges
- HIM Responsibilities
- Compare / Contrast and Relate to Academic Sources
- Conclusion
The Acute Care Data VS Non Acute Care Data paper must be 3 – 4 pages, not counting the title page and reference page (5 – 7 total). You must include 4 – 6 academic references, using citations to support your statements. Cite all sources of information with in your written text. Use paraphrasing to discuss the topic in a written paper. Refrain from using “direct quotes”. At the graduate level, you should have very few, if any, direct quotes in your writing. Paraphrasing (with citations) is the aim for graduate level writing. If you must use a direct quote, it should emphasize your statement, not be the means of presenting the facts.
Acute Care Data VS Non-Acute Care Data – Sample Answer
Introduction
This paper discusses the differences in roles of Health Information Management (HIM) professionals in Acute and Non Acute Health care facilities and the corresponding challenges encountered. Acute care is basically part of the secondary health care whereby patients are given acute treatment on a short term basis. Hospitalized patients are normally discharged as soon as medics confirm their health and stability standards. Non-acute care on the other hand entails outpatient clinics, rehabilitation services, home and schools health, dialysis centers and ambulatory clinics. Under this type of care, medics have more freedom when making patient care decisions compared to acute care (Schnering, Sayles & McCuen, 2013).
Read also Home-Based Acute Care Model for Older Patients
Acute Care (St. Joseph’s Medical Clinic)
Type of Data
Data about inpatients and outpatients are collected on a daily basis, this are later used to monitor number of patients treated daily, weekly or monthly. They are summarized into a frequency distribution format since it is difficult to look at data in its raw form. Data used in constructing frequency distribution include number of inpatients and outpatients in a day, number of newborns per day, Total length of stay of patients in intensive care units, and number of intra-hospital transfers. Data can also be recorded in form of ratios, proportions and rates for the case of dichotomous variables (Davis & LaCour, 2016). The facility has to record all the rates and indicators, measures of morbidity, mortality and volume indicators. Acute care services entail preventive, curative, palliative and rehabilitative services. It provides care to patients with the need of short term stabilization, critical care, trauma and acute surgery or any kind of emergency.
HIM Responsibilities
It has been argued that many hospitals or health care facilities are rich in data but poor in information. One of the HIM roles is to convert the data in the organization’s database into information that can be utilized by the physicians and other administrators (Davis & LaCour, 2016). They are mandated to present information that has been analyzed to respond to a specific medical need. Another function is verification of fact finding data that are composed daily. This survey indicates the patient’s activity from the onset of admission.
Challenges
The facility faces challenges associated with collection of accurate data and the use of the data for the provision of quality healthcare. The collected data are less likely to be used in operation of provided health services, patient outcomes and satisfactions which may render data collection to be less meaningful to the facility (Abdelhak & Alice, 2015). The need to train staff regularly upon updating systems and modification of existing health information systems has hindered the installation of effective data recording and collection systems.
Non-Acute Care (Queensland Health Clinic)
Types of data
There are varied sources of data depending on the type of care. For example, a patient might give out necessary information in person upon visiting the health facility. This includes name, address, past medical history, emergency contact number and how the patient intends to pay for the services. They may also use electronic record systems where the patient is required to give out personal information online reducing the use of paper work. The type of data recorded include number of monthly admitted episodes of care, non-admitted occasions of service, proportions of same day patients, number of patients days that have been accrued and non-acute episodes of care (Davis & LaCour, 2016).Other information include onset of signs and symptoms, risk factors and name of the physician on duty. They provide care to patients needing home based care, long term care, rehabilitation services, psychiatric services or mental health care.
Roles of HIM
They are expected to safeguard the patient’s health records with utmost integrity and quality. These entail medical history and physical examinations, laboratory results, X-rays and other daily examinations by the physicians. They are required to connect organizational operations ranging from clinical to administrative roles through effective flow of processed data without compromising security and privacy (Schnering et al, 2013). They have to ensure that important organizational information is shared to other facilities as required by relevant regulatory bodies. They are also required to interact with other health care providers and staff in the facility as a way of collecting more information.
Challenges
The use of electronic health recording has presented more harm than good to the HIM professionals. An encounter with a patient could necessitate the use of one page report, but the use of EHR entails the use of more than five pages. This is because of the voluminous nature of information received and it is becoming more difficult for the professionals to distinguish the relevant from the irrelevant data.HIM professional have also experienced inconsistencies in the recorded materials, this will take more time trying to verify the correct data and nullify the wrong results. The working environment for HIM professional is continually changing including the introduction of health reforms, e-health and electronic health recording (Fahrenholz & Russo, 2013). They are also mandated to continue refreshing their skills in accordance to the changing environment. They are also forced to regularly change methods of data collection.
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