Unit 7 Project

Health Information Management: Clinical and Service Quality

Part 1:

Write a 700- to 1,000-word paper that discusses the following:

Imagine you are the supervisor of the health information management (HIM) department in a large outpatient clinic. This department manages patient records. Complaints about your department are becoming more frequent and intense. 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. You decide to talk about these problems with employees throughout the clinic. The clinic’s receptionists 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 calls that they should be handling. The clinic’s nurses are also upset with the HIM staff; they claim 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.

Include a minimum of three peer-reviewed references, not including the textbook.

Format your paper consistent with APA 6th guidelines.

Part 2:

Write a 400- to 600-word paper that discusses the following:

If you were the team leader of the group described in the following case study, how would you refocus and remotivate the team toward the improvement goal?

When members were recruited for the improvement project, they were clearly told that the team’s work would be additional to their regular work responsibilities but that they had to treat it as a high priority. Assignments would have to be completed on time, and people would be required to attend meetings. Despite these clear expectations, by the third week of the project, team members started arriving late to meetings. They made excuses for not having completed their assigned tasks and were neglecting to return the leader’s phone calls.

Include a minimum of two peer-reviewed references, not including the textbook.

Format your paper consistent with APA 6th guidelines.

Submitting Your Assignments

Put your written assignments in a Word document. Save it in a location and with a name you will remember, using the following naming convention: username-assignment-unit#.doc.