Scenario

Happy Patient Healthcare and Sunny Day Hospital recently merged, resulting in the consolidation of the Health Information Management (HIM) Departments. You were the previous HIM Director at Happy Patient Healthcare and have been appointed as the director of the newly merged HIM Department. Three months have passed since the merger, and you have noticed some trouble with the work of the Release of Information (ROI) staff:

There have been frequent complaints from patients regarding long waits in receiving the medical records they requested.

There have been complaints from attorneys requesting records for Workers’ Comp claims, and you have noticed some “second request” forms in the mail. You do not recall this issue occurring in the past.

There have been four HIPAA complaints in the past three months, with records being sent to the wrong location. This is greatly concerning to you.

• When you walk by the ROI desk, the lines seem longer than they used to be.
• You also get the impression that the overall atmosphere in the office is more negative. The staff has been complaining, and they generally do not seem very happy at work.
• Below are some additional facts from the merger:
• The Happy Patient Healthcare ROI staff consisted of five staff members who used an Electronic Health Record system for their Release of Information workflows.
• At the time of the merger, three new Sunny Day Hospital ROI staff joined the five Happy Patient Healthcare ROI staff to form one department. The Sunny Day Hospital workflows were mostly paper-based. The plan was to have the Sunny Day Hospital staff learn the Happy Patient Healthcare system.

The two EHR systems from Happy Patient Healthcare and Sunny Day Hospital are not yet integrated.

There used to be two different ROI locations. Both are now centralized in one location.

• You have decided that this issue is an excellent candidate for Performance Improvement/Work Redesign. You want to educate your new management team on how this process will occur since this is the first Work Redesign that will be done since the merger. You want them to learn from this so that they can make their own performance improvements in the future.
• Instructions
• Create a PowerPoint presentation that you will use to communicate the Performance Improvement/Work Redesign to your Management Team. You should include speaker notes in the Notes pane on each slide. Be sure to address the following:
• How did you determine that the Release of Information process was a good candidate for Performance Improvement?

Which tools will be used in the Performance Improvement initiative, and how will they be used?

Include the steps you will take in the Work Redesign, including identifying members of the team.