PPV: What's in a name: Healthcare IT's addiction to acronyms
HIM Connection, January 22, 2008
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by Darice M. Grzybowski, MA, RHIA, FAHIMA
How did we get to the point that such extreme dollars and taxpayer monies are needed to pay consulting firms to sort out the alphabet soup in the acronym-addicted world of healthcare informatics? Technology differences aside, there is no doubt that miscommunication occurs when individuals do not use the same terminology to refer to the same type of system. And terminologies for components of the electronic health record are no isolated exception in healthcare vernacular confusion.
After all, how many different ways are there to refer to certain diagnoses? Consider hypertension, also known as HTN, or elevated blood pressure, or increased diastolic/systolic pressures, or HBP, and the list goes on. We have all learned the lessons of the dangers of abbreviation misuse in clinical documentation and have been warned by The Joint Commission (remember the organization formerly known as JCAHO?) about avoiding abbreviation use as a final diagnosis.
How about the abundance of names of associations dealing with health information topics and the related credentials and certifications they provide? Think about AHIMA, HIMSS, AHDI (formerly AAMT), AHRQ, AMIA, HITS, NAHIT, CHIME, HL7, CCHIT, NCVHS, NUBC, etc. Sometimes a rose is a rose is a rose-such as when CHINs turned into NHINs turned into RHIOs turned into HIEs. No wonder there is mass confusion and overlapping objectives.
This article appears in the January 2008 issue of Medical Records Briefing. For more information, click here. Subscribers to Medical Records Briefing can read the full article in the January 2008 issue. You can also purchase this article for $10 by clicking on the link above.
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