I interviewed Diann Brown, an HIM Director with more than 30 years of HIM experience. Here's the first installment of our interview.
Health Information Management is a complex field. To excel in HIM, you need the understanding of a lawyer, the knowledge of a medical researcher and the problem solving skills of a physician. If you’re an HIM director, you also need the motivation skills of a professional coach and the ability of an executive to see the “big picture.”
And if you’re marketing or selling to HIM directors, you should know what their work lives are all about.
I had a chance to speak to Diann Brown, HIM Director for Texas Health Harris Methodist Fort Worth and member of the American Health Information Management Association board of directors. I asked her to describe her job:
“I describe my department as the wheel in the middle of the wheel,” Diann said. “All these spokes are coming off of it where we actually have some type of interaction with all the ancillary and clinical departments. Everything that people do to take care of our patients, somehow HIM is impacted.”
She says she’s responsible for the operations of the department, which consist of coding, physician completion (or documentation) and data integrity. She’s responsible for compliance with regulatory agencies, release of information (ROI) and keeping up with of all the latest regulatory requirements and changes. She works with all the ancillary and clinical departments that touch a medical record, helping them resolve any issues they may have with documentation. She has a clinical documentation improvement program that reports to her. She also works with case management, with nursing services, with pharmacy, respiratory therapy and rehab.
“You know,” she said, “we run the gamut.”
In my next post, I’ll discuss an HIM director’s priorities.
Photo credit: AHIMA
