With the implementation of health exchange networks, the HIM
profession is branching off into new job areas of healthcare. Not only
will future HIM professionals oversee policies and processes relating
to information management, but future job includes various other
departments like IT, compliance, revenue cycle, business systems
analyst and financial data analyst. With the training of HIM
professionals working in these key areas of healthcare, there would
be an increase in accuracy in data collected versus accuracy of data
collected. This is important as the future of healthcare will involve
more technology. Although integrating technology into healthcare
will benefit a lot of patients, there are added barriers to implementing
health information exchange networks. A key piece is ensuring data
integrity and security is met. With more technology there are more
data hackers, and the more patient data is collected within one
system, the higher the risk is to keep that information secured.
Another barrier will be participation and getting all healthcare
organizations to participate and have free flowing information and
keeping it secure.
To increase the job performance improvements, HIM professionals
have already been adapting a lot to the changes, change
management, and what changes require to help with executing the
new technologies and new terminologies and classifications. I think
that HIM professionalism demands progressive strengthening of the
policy frameworks for information management, HIM skills,
documentation, team collaboration techniques, etc. to be able to use
the clinical analytics and healthcare financing and payment system to
support the overall quality of care and cost in the healthcare industry
in favour of the healthcare providers and patients’ satisfaction. I think
that the focus of HIM should be to adapt and optimize of the code
classifications and usage of the vocabularies and terminologies
parallel with the evolving payment system to better transit the health
information, patients’ information, and records with the third parties,
and payers, etc. by following all the local and federal policies to avoid
any jeopardy in the safety, security, and integrity of the health care
data.
