In one sense, the future is already here for those who manage health information. The skills HIM professionals need today are not very different from those they’ll need in 10 years, according to a new survey of practitioners, recruiters, and employers conducted by AHIMA.

In addition, while the industries looking for HIM knowledge continues to diversify, the greatest concentration of employment is expected to remain within seven industries that are today’s major employers.

What will change, however, is the breadth and depth of the competencies required to do the work. The fundamental knowledge of health informatics that may serve today, for example, won’t go a long way in 10 years, according to survey respondents.

Following are the top five competencies that respondents believe are required for health information management now and in 10 years, ranked by their current importance.

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HIM professionals who go from practice to teaching (or teach part-time while practicing) bring a wealth of real-life experience to their classes. They also bring some subtler lessons they have learned about succeeding in the workplace.

Jill Burrington-Brown, who teaches in an online HIM program at Missouri Western State University, shares with her students the communication skills she has learned in a career that has covered a range of settings and roles.

Burrington-Brown, MS, RHIA, FAHIMA, has been an HIM director; managed quality improvement, medical staff, and risk management departments; taught; worked in a law firm; and for eight years, she was a professional practice manager at AHIMA. Communication skills may not be a chapter in standard HIM and health IT textbooks, but she assures her students that communicating well will fundamental to doing their jobs well. (more…)

“No” is a common word heard by PPE coordinators.

Getting busy HIM professionals to host an HIM student for a professional practice experience can be a challenge. As important as the internships are in giving students real-world experience, PPE coordinators say it takes a mix of professionalism, emotion, and incentives to place students in today’s hectic work world.

Securing sites has become increasingly harder as more HIM departments face major health IT installations and reduced staffing, says Kathy Cliggett, MA, RHIA, an assistant professor and PPE coordinator at Gwynedd-Mercy College in Pennsylvania. HIM directors often feel stretched too thin to host a student, she says.

Other HIM professionals may be hesitant because they don’t know enough about the programs and responsibilities, says Stephanie Donovan, MBA, RHIA, assistant professor of HIM at Gwynedd-Mercy. “I think communicating realistic expectations to our clinical sites is one of the key components of them accepting students,” she says. (more…)

This time last year the Journal surveyed members on their top coding challenges. High on the list were staffing shortages, with respondents citing trouble finding qualified coders. This year the Journal again informally polled a group of members, this time focusing on the state of coder staffing.

The long-standing coding shortages weren’t magically solved in the past year. Only 60 percent of respondents to this year’s poll reported that their departments are completely staffed for all approved positions. About a quarter (23 percent) have coding positions that have been open for more than 3 months. The balance reported positions that have been open 3 months or less. (more…)

In the June print issue Robert James Campbell writes on applying lean thinking techniques to healthcare. The process improvement technique can be used to identify and eliminate waste in any activity. Campbell, an assistant professor at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, teaches the lean thinking technique to health services and health information students. Here he shares one project in which students reengineer a patient transfer process using lean thinking.

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As healthcare expenses continue to erode household, government, and provider budgets, the industry needs better methods to reduce the cost of care. One tool that can increase efficiency and value is a change management technique called lean thinking.

Lean thinking is based on the Toyota Production Model and is built upon five steps to identify and eliminate waste: value, value stream, flow, pull, and perfection. The ultimate goal of lean thinking as applied to healthcare is to provide services and products that add value to the patient by improving care in the most efficient manner possible. (more…)

Professional practice experience is an important part of an HIM student’s education. Hands-on experience with HIM work is important to helping graduates enter the work force prepared. Each CAHIIM-accredited HIM program must have at least one PPE, which helps students assimilate the HIM theory taught in class with real-world HIM applications.

Both students and sponsoring facilities new to PPEs might not know what to expect. To help them properly prepare and get the most out of their site visits, the AHIMA House of Delegates Team on HIM Higher Education and Workforce has created the Clinical Practice Sites/Professional Practice Experience Guide.

The 25-page guide provides information and best practices on serving as a clinical PPE site as well as advice to PPE students looking to get their first glimpse at HIM work. It offers tips on how to make the most of the program. The guide can be used by site managers, HIM department mentors, academic programs, and students.

The guide is divided into chapters addressing each participant in a PPE experience. The student section, for example, outlines the expectations of a PPE student. The affiliation site guide chapter lays out what is expected of the organization and helps prospective sites develop their PPE programs.

The ICD-10-CM/PCS final rule requires a major transition in academic programs as well as in the field. Institutions currently teaching ICD-9-CM in baccalaureate, associate, and certificate programs must transition their curricula to ICD-10-CM/PCS in coordination with the industry’s transition to the new coding systems. Educators will be among the first in the country who need to learn ICD-10-CM/PCS.

The April practice brief “Transitioning to ICD-10-CM/PCS—An Academic Timeline” outlines how and when HIM academic programs should begin integrating ICD-10-CM/PCS education into their curriculum. The article lays out the academic transition into three phases: preparation, hybrid, and full implementation. The countdown to integrating ICD-10-CM/PCS begins on August 1, 2010, when educators should start expanding curriculum content on courses affected by ICD-10-CM/PCS changes. (more…)

A 19-year-old college student uses her university clinic for gynecological visits. Her parents contact the clinic and ask to see her health record in order to find out if she is using birth control. The clinic shares the record with the parents. Did the clinic staff do wrong?

Maybe not.

The behavior would seem to fly in the face of the HIPAA privacy rule, but virtually all public schools and most private and public postsecondary institutions are covered by a different federal law.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, regulates the privacy of students’ education records. These can include student health records if the institution chooses to classify them as such. The HIPAA privacy rule does not apply to records covered by FERPA.

It’s a complicated intersection of federal law, and the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education have issued guidance to help schools navigate it. See “When FERPA and HIPAA Collide” in the Winter 2009 issue of AHIMA’s Academic Advisor e-newsletter.

In a September feature, writer Gina Rollins talks with several HIM professionals who sought master’s level educations to better manage the development and widespread adoption of health IT and digital information.

She writes, “With EHRs has come the need to better understand and explain how data are defined, analyzed, and interpreted. That includes everything from knowing the ins-and-outs of relational databases, grasping the evolving definitions of the legal medical record, and creating the ability to reproduce data consistently. There also is a burgeoning body of standards, vocabularies and terminologies, and the human factor of managing the transition from paper to electronic media.” (more…)