HIP Professionals Honored in National Spotlight

HIP Week is April 18 Through April 24.

Health Information Professionals (HIP) Week will be recognized April 18 through April 24 according to the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA).   It has been established that the third week in April will be HIP Week.   The theme of this year’s HIP Week is Keeping Health Information Human.   The health information professionals are the people who interact with the providers as well as the patients.   It is their job to ensure that the patient’s health information is available during and after the patient’s health care. 

Some topics that are being discussed this year include:

1. 1. Information Blocking
   2. Social Determinants of Health
   3. Patient Identification and Matching

Information blocking was addressed in the Cures Act which was passed in 2016.   April 5, 2021 is the deadline for the first stage of compliance.    Information blocking addresses the ability for health information to be exchanged easily with other providers.

Social determinants of health (SDoH) are issues that impact the accessibility of healthcare such as food security, homelessness, access to healthcare, transportation, employment concerns, etc.   The SDoH can be assigned ICD-10-CM codes to capture the information.   One obstacle to consistently reporting this information is the lack of definitions of the SDoH.

Patient Identification Day was celebrated on March 24, 2021.  Patient identification was a topic for AHIMA’s advocacy campaign.   Patient identification and matching are the processes of accurately identifying patients within a database.   In the “old” days when the patient charts were paper documents in file folders, it was easy to see the impact of multiple charts for the same patient.    Patient identification and matching processes are the electronic version of the master patient index clean-up efforts.  

The topics that are included on the AHIMA Innovation portion of the HIP Week website include the following:

1. 1. Data Analysis Makes the Difference
   2. Achieve Data Visualization Through Staff Training
   3. Data Sharing and Patient Benefits
   4. Data Modeling Identifies Predictors for Better Health

The above topics were submitted by winners of the AHIMA Grace Award in previous years.  The Grace Award is named after the AHIMA founder, Grace Whiting Myers and is given annually.   The award honors healthcare delivery organizations for their innovative and novel approaches to using health information to deliver high-quality care to patients.

The AHIMA website contains a toolkit that can be downloaded to assist in your week’s celebrations.   The AHIMA toolkit contains a catalog of promotional items for purchase, a sample promotional piece, a Power Point template, and backgrounds for Zoom calls.  

Health information professionals interact with all types of healthcare professionals, providers, and patients.    They serve valuable functions of converting the healthcare documentation into ICD-10-CM/PCS and/or CPT®/HCPCS codes, protecting patient information, releasing healthcare information according to state/federal regulations, and assisting physicians in completing their clinical documentation.   Please take the time to honor their contributions to your healthcare organization.