Reference no: EM133431795

AHIMA Competencies: 

V.4 Identify the impact of policy on health care

VI.2 Identify the impact of organizational change 

VI.6 Examine behaviors that embrace cultural diversity 

VI.8 Describe consumer engagement activities

Instructions:  You work in HIM at a hospital in a poor section of the city with a large number of patients who are homeless, who live in poverty, who are brought in for evaluation by children's services, and similar situations. Unemployment is very high in this area. Your manager was asked to provide regular data analyses to administration about the various vulnerable populations seen at the hospital. The data is currently not being collected systematically in the EHR. She knows you recently completed a medical coding course and she knows that some of the code systems include codes related to social determinants of health. She asks you to research the options for collecting this data and producing reports.

 She wants you to produce a report of your recommendations that she can use as talking points in her meetings with IT, administration, and others in the hospital that may need to provide support in the process.

In this report creation, you have to use structured and unstructured data in the EHR, as well as what you have learned about medical coding.

You will want to complete the following when working on your report.

1. Locate the codes in the codebooks that relate to social determinants of health.
2. Use brainstorming and research techniques to create a list of situations that administration may want to see data on.  Set this up in a table format.
3. For each common life situation encountered by patients, identify the best place to record this data.  For example, using ICD-10-CM code xxx.xx, using structured data field titled xxxx from the admission form, etc.  If collecting the data from the EHR, determine where in the patient record it is best collected (i.e. on admission, by nursing, on discharge, etc.).  These fields do not need to currently exist. Your manager will work with the appropriate staff to have them added.  Add your recommendation to your table for each entry.
4. Design a report format that includes each piece of data you are recommending for collection.

In your report, do the following:

1. Explain why you are making these recommendations (i.e. provide justification).
2. Discuss patient engagement strategies to help patients take responsibility for their health, including use of the patient portal and how these reports can help with patient engagement strategy development.
3. Discuss the impact the additional data collection may have on organization change.
4. Discuss how to collect this data while embracing cultural diversity.
5.  An introduction and conclusion section for your report should be provided.