Assignment: Implementation Committee

Directions: Imagine that you are Maria Stolze, RHIA, vice president of HIM at Parkview Health in Fort Wayne, IN.  Carefully read through the following scenario:

Real-World Case
The following case is an excerpt from an article by Gina Rollins that appeared in the Journal of AHIMA, October 2007.

Many large healthcare systems that have multiple hospitals and other facilities over a broad geographical area have adopted complete HIM centralization. One example is Parkview Health in Fort Wayne, IN. Maria Stolze, RHIA, vice president of HIM, has direct responsibility for all HIM functions at the system's eight facilities. There are no HIM directors at the local level.

Instead, two directors-of HIM services and transcription, respectively-report to Stolze. Managers and supervisors who report to the two directors have day-to-day responsibility for HIM functions at Parkview hospitals. The supervisors rotate between facilities, although at least two are dedicated to the flagship Parkview Hospital because of its size. Depending on size, there may be as few as three HIM personnel at individual facilities, as coding and transcription are performed off-site.

Parkview arrived at this model to improve quality and service and to decrease cost, goals it has achieved, says Stolze. The approach also has been critical to adopting uniform HIM policies and procedures. "I'm the ultimate decision-maker. Even if we're not all in agreement, that's an advantage of our model. Otherwise there might be conflicting policies and procedures between the individual facilities. You need someone to call it when there are different perspectives," she says.

You have been put in charge of forming an implementation committee to assist in the selection process of a new Health Information System that is going to be installed sometime in the next 24 months and need to submit an over of your selection process. Answer the following questions according to the scenario above to help complete your overview:

• What members are you going to select for this committee? 
• How can you justify that the HIM staff in all of the facilities at Parkview Health are fairly represented? 
• What type of members do you need to make sure that you include? 
• Should there be members on this committee from outside of the HIM department? 
• Why is this committee important and what duties will they perform?