As a newly hired HIM Manager, you have been asked to participate in the organization’s strategic planning process that will involve consolidating several hospitals under one system and creating a departmental disaster contingency plan.

One of the hospitals was recently affected by a flood. The data on the computers in the basement were destroyed. Unfortunately, backups were in the next room, and also destroyed.

While it is expected that the EHR system will function across the facilities effectively, there has to be a plan in place to specify what to do for power surges, storms, floods, or failure of a main system server – these are just a few of the events that should be considered and planned for.

You begin by selecting a workgroup of supervisors, managers, and other team leads across the hospitals’ HIM departments. After the first meeting, you realize that not everyone fully comprehends the differences between general management activities and strategic management. You want to make sure they understand that the plan will have a strategic focus (higher level goals for the department as it relates to the organization merger).

As part of the participant’s role on the strategic workgroup, they will need to have strong interpersonal skills and communicate effectively to gather information and provide status updates to their sites. As the executive committee decides which employees to select for this group, they will need to be able to know what skills are needed and how these skills can be developed by the workgroup, so the process is successful.

Then, you will create a disaster plan for HIM departments, to use in the event of another flood or other disaster. Followed by an implementation checklist.

The strategic workgroup proposal, disaster plan, and implementation checklist will be presented in an executive presentation.

Assignment Instructions

Strategic Workgroup

1. Compare general management principles and strategic management. Show similarities and differences and apply to HIM departments and various HIM- related job roles.
2. Provide an analysis of the human aspects of the planning process.
3. Analyze the critical thinking skills, emotional intelligence, and level of employee engagement needed by workgroup participants.
4. Provide the necessary information for the right workgroup participants to be selected.
5. Apply the types of processes that must occur for strategic management to be successful. There are a lot of important decisions to be made, problem solving, difficult conversations to have (as not everyone can get what they specifically want), and hard work that must be done.
6. Recommend how workgroup participants with these characteristics will be selected to reflect the best candidates.

Disaster Plan

1. Develop and recommend a contingency plan for the facilities to follow, as to not lose data during the next floor or disaster. Include both contingency and business continuity plans in your recommendations.

• communications with patients and staff in case of emergency
• handling scheduling of appointments and patients
• documenting clinical care while the EHR is down or unavailability of data
• a plan for training or rehearsing staff

1. Compile a list of issues that the loss of the health records would cause.

Implementation Checklist

1. Create a disaster checklist for the workgroup team members.

• Include all the concepts that you have learned about strategic management topics, as well as, the soft skills we have focused on during the project scenario.
• The professional plan should include an assessment for disaster training. Conduct a search in our library and learning center or with your web search engine on “disaster planning for EHR.” Examine the elements needed for the assessment.

Executive Presentation

Create an 20-25 executive presentation to present your strategic workgroup proposal, disaster plan recommendations, and implementation checklist.

1. Strategic workgroup recommendations
2. Disaster plan and recommendations.

• communications with patients and staff in case of emergency
• handling scheduling of appointments and patients
• documenting clinical care while the EHR is down or unavailability of data
• a plan for training or rehearsing staff

1. List of issues that the loss of the health records would cause.
2. Implementation checklist.