| Health Information Management (HIM) departments and professionals are widely recognized as subject matter expert in the hospital environments; however, there are very few HIM professionals employed in the home health and HME care environments. There are several factors underlying this disparity; many home health and HME care administrators do not recognize the unique skills and abilities of the HIM profession; alternative care settings have fewer financial resources to support HIM departments; and home health and HME care is viewed as an uncertain non-traditional career path by HIM professionals. As a result of the limited number of HIM professionals in alternative care there are little to no best practice guidelines addressing the unique work flows of these care settings. The current hospital focused HIM best practices are examined and then several best practice resources developed that can be utilized by HIM professionals in the home health and HME care profession. These resources focus on three areas; high level management tools, departmental policies and common departmental workflows. Management tools include: an HIM organizational chart, overview of common department positions, health information manager job description, mission statement, methods to track work volume and productivity, and employee performance review. Departmental policies include; contents of the home medical record, data entered into the EHR, inventory naming in the EHR, and entering patient alerts in the EHR. Common HIM workflows described include; coding, document management, release of information, quality improvement, OASIS & comprehensive assessments. |
