MD Anderson Cancer Center Named 2022 AHIMA Grace Award Winner

Each year, AHIMA presents its prestigious Grace Award to an institution that exemplifies excellence in their use of health information to deliver high-quality care to patients. AHIMA presented the 2022 Grace Award to MD Anderson Cancer Center in recognition of its state-of-the-art research and its tireless dedication to preserving patient data integrity.

Jennifer Miller, director of health information management at MD Anderson, addresses how MD Anderson has distinguished itself as one of only 10 dedicated cancer centers and one of only 51 comprehensive cancer centers designated by the National Cancer Institute. Through the center’s focus on cancer patient care, research, education and prevention, MD Anderson consistently ranks as one of the leading cancer hospitals, both domestically and worldwide.

“MD Anderson is one of the world’s most respected cancer centers,” Miller says. “We currently stand as the nation’s leader in cancer care with the US News and World Report, and this summer we, again, ranked as number one for the 2022-23 best hospital rankings. As a cancer center, we are very focused on excellence and research driven patient care.”

Innovations in Health Information

MD Anderson leverages health information to deliver comprehensive care for patients with varying cancer types, including cancers not treated elsewhere.

“Our team of providers with specialized expertise works with every patient individually to provide treatment plans that optimize outcomes and improve their quality of life,” Miller says. “We assemble the plans with the information that we have available from clinical trials research, from the patients themselves, and from our experiences.”

In addition to specialized treatment plans, cancer prevention lies at the heart of the MD Anderson mission. According to Miller, MD Anderson supports programs and research that seek to advance evidence-based prevention strategies, understanding that healthy lifestyle choices lower an individual’s cancer risk. MD Anderson looks to push the boundaries of traditional health information management in an effort to improve speed of care delivery.

“This past year, our HIM team began a new workflow to centralize obtaining original pathology slides from other facilities when a patient is newly admitted to MD Anderson,” Miller says. “In one particular case, the patient did not come through our ambulatory processes or pre-admitting processes; they had been admitted right to our facility after having some pathology done at another facility.”

Miller stresses the importance of health information in relation to eliminating procedure duplications, which ultimately puts undue strain on patients. At MD Anderson, Miller and her team strive to identify more efficiencies that will ultimately improve the quality of care.  

“Obtaining an original pathology slide from another facility reduces the need to repeat a procedure and helps us avoid additional costs,” Miller says. “MD Anderson pathology experts read the slides, which frequently results in a more specific diagnosis. We are agile with rapid adoption practices, continuous improvement, and advanced technologies that we use in health information to deliver the highest quality of care to our patients and improve patient outcomes.”

Making Breakthroughs

Beyond its research efforts, MD Anderson is committed to enhancing patient data integrity. Its CDI team works to ensure that records are accurate and complete for each patient's individual cancer journey. Most recently, MD Anderson has deployed optical character recognition (OCR)/natural language processing (NLP) technology for scanned and imported documents. This technology allows Miller and her team to identify poor quality pages, potential duplicate pages, and pages that contain patient information errors.

“In addition to the OCR/NLP technology, we have maintained a clean and strong patient index with 0.05% of potential duplicate accounts,” Miller says. “This duplicate account process and practice was really important, especially when MD Anderson became an approved vaccine facility for the community and had to deal with a large volume of registered patients.”

MD Anderson drives impactful research across the spectrum of cancer care. Discoveries from MD Anderson labs translate rapidly into clinical impact, and insights from the clinical care side guide research in the lab. Miller explains how MD Anderson’s substantial breakthroughs in drug testing allow them to offer more innovative treatment options.

“During this last year, 29 drugs have been tested here at MD Anderson,” Miller says. “We have received FDA approval and have been awarded 195 patents. Our clinical trials program is one of the largest of its kind in the world. We currently have more than 1,600 trials with nearly 10,000 patients enrolled.”

Committed to the Mission

MD Anderson adheres closely to the AHIMA mission and vision, particularly as it relates to educating the next generation of cancer care and research experts. Today, more than 4,000 trainees and students are enrolled across all education programs.

“In HIM, we host students on an annual basis, with coding training program cohorts that run twice per year,” Miller says. “One of the ways that we continue to empower our team to make an impact is through professional coaching. HIM professionals at MD Anderson have access to coaches trained by the International Coaching Federation, known as the ICF. These credentialed coaches help us maximize our professional and personal potential.”

With safety as a core value, MD Anderson is poised to become a high reliability organization. Miller asserts that all MD Anderson employees will undergo specific training as it pertains to working within a high reliability environment.

“During the next year, we plan to continue to grow in high reliability, focusing on our near miss events, as well as planned and unplanned barriers, known as good catches,” Miller says. “We are also focusing on human factors and how we can better eliminate mistakes. Fostering a culture of safety, self-reporting, and continuous learning will take us to the next level and will hopefully help us avoid future burnout.”

Miller boasts the importance of receiving the Grace Award and its greater implications for the work MD Anderson has done over the years and the innovations yet to come.

“We are so honored to have received the Grace Award,” Miller says. “We are grateful to AHIMA, to our HIM colleagues here in IT compliance coding, and to the MD Anderson providers and researchers. We are so excited to share the honor of this award with our incredible MD Anderson community as we look to fulfill our mission to end cancer.”