Consider volunteers for filing overflow
HIM Connection, May 10, 2005
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For those facilities using paper documents, managing the filing of those papers can be a challenge.
Southwest Washington Medical Center in Vancouver averages more than 280 patients in its emergency department (ED) every day, resulting in about 12 inches daily of ancillary reports and other documents to file into the patient records. Although the facility is moving along the continuum from paper to electronic health records, it now prints much of the documentation and stores it on paper.
Both adult and teenage volunteers help Sandy O'Rourke, MBA, RHIA, director of health information services, and her team to organize diagnostic testing reports by medical record number and match them to the ED report.
"They also sort and organize an enormous amount of other miscellaneous filing for the filing staff," says O'Rourke. A staff member checks the matches and a file clerk performs all filing back into the records.
The hospital's volunteer services recruits, assesses, and trains volunteers and works with various departments to schedule work hours. The basic training includes education about HIPAA privacy and security, but because the volunteers also handle patient records, O'Rourke conducts further training related to their HIM-specific tasks. She also asks them to sign confidentiality agreements.
O'Rourke's department has a waiting list of people who want to volunteer, which she attributes to how she and the rest of the employees treat the volunteers. That includes showing appreciation and respect and treating them as part of the family. "They're not part of the woodwork," she says. "They're doing us a favor, and we make an effort to show that they're important to us. We have had great success with their help and really appreciate them."
This excerpt is adapted from Medical Records Briefing.
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