Computers and medical-record administration

Computers and Medical-Record Administration Envision this scenario: You are one of 25 students in a health-records-administration (HRA) program in a medical-records lab. As the lab instructor demonstrates an abstracting system on a personal computer, you and your classmates strive to gain a good viewing position. Obviously, only a few of you will get a firsthand view of what computerized abstracting is all about. If you lose out in the scrimmage, you will have some catching up to do. At one time or another, most of us have found ourselves crowded out of a chance to learn. But faculty members of the department of health-records administration at the University of Pittsburgh were determined not to let the devil take the hindmost. They collectively committed themselves to the development and coordination of a computer laboratory that medical-record-administration students could use exclusively. What drove this commitment was that nearly 90 percent of all hospitals' recordkeeping is at least partially computerized. [1] Maintaining accurate and complete medical records is the vital link for communication among professionals for effective current and future patient care. Major developments in microcomputer technology have made automation very attractive for many medical-record functions, and microcomputers have proliferated in medical-record departments. [2] Medical-record managers and supervisors must be able to operate computer systems so that they can either train their staff or personally use the systems to fulfill their responsibilities more efficiently and effectively. Plans for the lab included the acquisition of personal computers and the development of a software library made up of popular office-environment software, along with software specific to hospital and medical recordkeeping. The lab would give HRA students the opportunity to master personal computing and would also expose them to a variety of health-care programs, therefore preparing them for future roles as decision-makers. (A survey of 129 hospitals had revealed that 69 percent of medical-record administrators are involved in the selection of departmental software and are on department computer-planning teams. Additionally, 39 percent are members of facility wide computer planning teams. [3]) Moreover, the university's HRA graduates would be prepared with the necessary skills to function in the real world as true health-information specialists: The medical-record market needs graduates with good systems and computer skills as well as those able to manage the day-to-day affairs of a medical-record service. [4] Most medical-record professionals can confirm that they either currently work or previously have worked in a deparmtent housing at least one computer terminal. The first step in the lab development was to produce a plan of the project organization. The plan included the following technical objectives: 1. Develop a schedule for acquiring the software and hardware, including promised delivery dates, PC setup and software installation. 2. Acquire the office-environment and hospital/medical-record software that the faculty found suitable for inclusion in the HRA curriculum. 3. Acquire the appropriate hardware, including personal computers, printers and peripheral devices, that would meet the software requirements for compatibility and would provide for future expandability. The hardware selected should conform to the current standard in the personal-computer market. 4. Revise the HRA curriculum to include activities, assignments and project modules that would use the new HRA computer lab to its fullest. The Process Once a time-schedule was developed, software evaluation was performed. The Prospective Payment System (PPS, the system through which hospitals are reimbursed for Medicare claims) has prompted several new software developments aimed at helping medical-record departments provide prompt and accurate reimbursement. …