Healthcare Administration Questions

​Imagine you are the supervisor of the health information department (HIM) in a large outpatient clinic.  This department manages patient records. Complaints about your department are becoming more frequent and intense than in the past.  Some clinic employees have complained that the HIM department takes too long to retrieve patient records.  Others have expressed dismay over the rudeness of HIM staff.  As the manager, you decide to talk about these problems with employees throughout the clinic.

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The clinic’s receptionists who are your internal customers respond to you defensively.  They tell you that the HIM staff won’t answer the phone and that they want some backup when they are busy with patients.  You talk to the HIM staff and find their stories are just as negative.  They say they are being charged with more responsibilities but have no additional help. They also complain that the receptionists transfer the calls that they should be handling.  Your HIM staff indicate that the receptionists know when patients schedule their appointments which is usually days in advance and there should be fewer STAT requests for patient records on the same day.   The clinic’s nurses are also upset with the HIM staff; they claim that the department does not help them locate patient charts, causing long wait times for patients.  The clinic’s physicians say they cannot assume additional tasks to alleviate the situation because their days are already chaotic.  They further indicate that they incur the wrath of the patients due to long waiting times.  The physicians cannot complete their routines on time because of backlog due to delays in acquiring patient records.  As a clinician stated ”  without test results or patient data, our hands are tied and there is only so much we can do”……

1. What improvement tool(s) would you use to identify all possible reasons for the increase in complaints about the HIM department? Provide your rationale.

2. What tool(s) would you use to gather data to confirm the reasons for the complaints about the HIM department?  Why?

3. You believe that complaints spike on certain days of the week.  What tool(s) would you use to analyze/determine this theory?

4.  You have gathered data about the causes of complaints.  What tool(s) would you use to prioritize the problems?

5.  You need to define and understand the current process for retrieving patient records.  What tool would you use to visually define the process?