Health Information Mangement(HIM) or Medical Record professionals provide many valuable services to the healthcare consumer they can do this by providing information to you, facilitating access to your records, and answering any questions you have about your health information. In addition, the HIM professional at your local hospital can recommend resources to help you wade through your health record. HIM professionals really are a wealth of information. In most cases, however, because of the way healthcare facilities are organized, you need to initiate the contact with the HIM professional. That’s why it is important for you to understand the HIM department and seek it out.
Individuals in the HIM department are trained to provide certain basic services for you and for your health information. The list below contains the typical, basic responsibilities of an HIM professional.
Typical responsibilities of the health information professional that involve or affect you:
- - Assign a medical record number
- Create the forms/format for collecting your health information
- Create the process to ensure that all pieces of your health information end up in one common location (paper or electronic)
- Analyze the information to ensure it is complete and consistent with laws and regulatory requirements
- Interact with physicians to obtain complete information
- Assign diagnostic codes and procedural codes
- Retrieve your information when you request it
- Make your information available to healthcare professionals who need it and have the right to it
- Protect your information from unlawful disclosure
- Make your information available to government, research organizations, and insurance companies
- Ensure that on subsequent visits, new information is added to the same original record, so that you only have one record on an ongoing basis
Ruthann Russo, PhD, JD, MPH, RHIT, is a healthcare expert with more than 20 years of experience working in and advising healthcare organizations.
