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AHIMA: Information Governance Assures Information is Trustworthy


AHIMA: Information Governance Assures Information is Trustworthy

Date Posted: Monday, November 23, 2015

 

Healthcare leaders share insights and strategies for implementing information governance at AHIMA Summit

The way healthcare organizations' leaders, staff and patients  interact with information is changing rapidly, making information governance (IG) a strategic imperative to assure information is trustworthy. IG is a vital component to improving patient care, population health and reducing healthcare costs.

At this week's American Health Information Management Association's Information Governance: The Value Proposition A Thought Leadership Summit, healthcare leaders and innovators shared their experiences and explored strategies for implementing an IG framework.

Traditional data and information management strategies are not keeping up with the needs, requirements and demands being placed on healthcare organizations today; this makes the need for IG urgent, said presenters Deborah Green, MBA, RHIA, AHIMA executive vice president, chief innovation and global services officer, and Stephanie Crabb, principal at Immersive LLC.

"IG is not a luxury, but an imperative," Green said. "We cannot transform, we cannot lead and succeed with reform, if we do not trust our information. We must value our data and information like the new global currency that it is. IG provides the critical framework that recognizes information, first, as a highly valued asset, and then offers a structure to liberate that information throughout the healthcare ecosystem with discipline, integrity and purpose."

Presenters from the Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, Va., shared insights from their IG implementation process. They said that implementing IG provides actionable and trustworthy information alignment across the organization and enables accurate decision making. They stressed the importance of securing executive leadership support for IG and educating others throughout the organization on its value.

 

The presenters from the clinic's Carilion Clinic Technology Services Group included Stephen Morgan, MD, senior vice president and chief medical information officer, Cindy Phelps, RHIA, director of HIM and administrative applications and Thomas Marlow, MBA, PMP, director, technology and analytics.

"IG leads to better insights, which leads to better decision making and ultimately better care," said Stephen Morgan, MD, senior vice president and chief medical information officer at Carilion Clinic Technology Services Group. "For example, delivering high quality, real-time data to a physician allows the physician to identify whether a patient has already received a specific test. Having this accurate data means the physician is able to close the gap in care and ensure a more complete patient story."

At the beginning of its process, the Carilion Clinic identified three key components that make up IG - data governance, security governance and information technology governance - and collaborated with the different departments to develop governance policies for each.

In addition to presentations on real-life lessons from implementing IG, the Summit provided several panel and round table discussions on strategies for engaging executive leadership and realizing a return on investment for IG initiatives.

"The thought leaders gathered at AHIMA's IG summit are providing important insights into the need for IG and practical strategies for implementing a framework," said AHIMA CEO Lynne Thomas Gordon, MBA, RHIA, CAE, FACHE, FAHIMA. "We're encouraged by the increasing recognition that IG is an imperative and AHIMA is committed to helping organizations implement a framework that will improve patient care, make processes more efficient and reduce risk by providing a more effective understanding of data."

The Summit is the latest in AHIMA's IG leadership efforts. To help organizations, AHIMA created the  Information Governance Principles for Healthcare" , the AHIMA IG Adoption Model and a toolkit sharing best practices and resources for starting and implementing IG within an organization. In October, AHIMA also announced two new services - IG PulseRate" and IG Advisors" - to help organziations implement IG.

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About AHIMA

The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) represents more than 101,000 health information professionals in the United States and around the world. AHIMA is committed to promoting and advocating for high quality research, best practices and effective standards in health information and to actively contributing to the development and advancement of health information professionals worldwide. AHIMA's enduring goal is quality healthcare through quality information. www.ahima.org


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