The Journal of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) has highlighted how health information management professionals can advance information governance within their own organizations.
Throughout 2014, AHIMA has urged healthcare organizations to make information governance (IG) a strategic priority.
The topic was a major focus of AHIMA’s 86th annual Convention and Exhibit in San Diego (Sept. 27-Oct. 2) and also in the October issue of the Journal of AHIMA.
“IG practices are key to the future of the health information management field and an imperative for healthcare organizations to use health data and information to their full benefit to improve care and reduce costs,” said AHIMA chief executive officer Lynne Thomas Gordon.
In the article, “Slow to the Information Governance Starting Line,” Thomas Gordon encouraged the C-suite to make IG strategy an organizational priority.
“It’s easy to think it can be put on hold or maintained in one department while executives deal with other challenges, but this is a mistake,” he said. “Developing a strategy should be a collaborative effort and is essential to realizing the benefits of governance.”
At the convention, AHIMA unveiled the first Information Governance Principles for Healthcare (IGPHC), eight guidelines organizations can use to help frame their IG programs. AHIMA also presented a maturity model and assessment, which correlates to the IGPHC.
Deborah Green, MBA, RHIA, AHIMA’s executive vice president/operations and chief operating officer, said an important next step is to define how to use IG in an operational sense to improve processes and care.
In 2015, AHIMA plans to launch an IG pilot where healthcare organizations will take the IG Principles for Healthcare and Maturity Model and work on integrating them into actual practice.
AHIMA, US, Thomas Gordon
