Question

Suppose you are hired to start a new department in an existing healthcare consulting firm. The focus of the department is to manage health information processes, documentation, and records. Organize the work for this new department.

Create a pictorial, such as an organization chart.
Provide a 2-3 page proposal to answer the following questions:

Which tasks must be performed?
How will tasks be organized into jobs?
How will jobs be organized into a department?
How specialized will the jobs be?
How will work and jobs be coordinated?
What will the vertical hierarchy look like?
How much authority (and for what purposes) will you decentralized to different jobs?
Which external and internal factors will affect how you organize jobs and the department?

Answer 1

At first we will need the following to begin:

A Health information managing division, the required health information specifics, various functions required to be set up, different sub divisions within the management team.

Decisive org structure:
1. Specifics - Health Information Organization

2. Department name: Various, with emphasis on information technology, e.g., Health rooms

3. Type of structure: Service structure

Organizational requirements:

Coding - Filing area - Transcription - Release of information , Record analysis (or data quality) - Record completion - Statistics - Tumor registry - Data abstracting - Birth/death certificate - Record (data) organizing - Utilization review - MPI maintenance - Physician credentialing - Quality Assurance - Admission - Clinic clerical support - DRG & Case mix analysis - Medical Records * - Patient discharge - Information System Administration - Form design - Training - Medical secretary - System security (or data protection) - Technical support - Telecommunication - User support - Website development - Clinical IS development - Performance management - Risk management - Medical library

Then go ahead and set up a medical library, an IT department & a healthcare information management team

All these departments are to be organized under the direction of a new top manager known as the health information manager. The health information manager’s activities include those related to information resource integration, information strategic planning, development and coordination of policies and procedures for information technology, and information management.

Healthcare data/information gathering - Cooperation with form designing committee for designing information form, Data/information quality analysis

Healthcare data/information processing

Data/information organizing

Data/information classifying (coding)

Extraction and classifying of information other than disease and operation data

Compiling administrative and health statistics

Healthcare data/information storage and distribution

Storage and retrieval of medical records

Maintenance of a variety of indices and registries (paper-based or electronic)

Release of information

Research coordination

Support for quality assurance, risk management, and utilization management

The Healthcare Information Management team should consist of three org units based on service lines below:

A data gathering and maintenance services unit, responsible for medical record storage, cooperation with form designing committee in form design/redesign, and analysis of data quality

A data processing services unit, responsible for organizing data, classifying (coding) data, and compiling administrative and health statistics

An information distribution services unit, responsible for release of information, research coordination, and cooperation in utilization review, risk management, and quality assurance

Example of organizational chart:

A hospital vice president to whom a hospital manager overall and a health inspector reports

And the health inspector has 3 reportees overall: Medical library, IT & Healthcare information

Note: You could simply put these in a box and create an org chart using simple powerpoint techniques