PPV: Ensure your place at the EHR decision-making table

There are leaders and there are followers. And during the labor-intensive process of an EHR implementation, this couldn’t be truer.

 

So where does this leave the HIM director? In an ideal position to assert his or her change management and leadership skills, says Leslie Fox, MA, RHIA, FAHIMA, CEO of Care Communications, Inc., in Chicago. “We’re living in a time of such dramatic and pro-found change from the paper to the electronic record,” says Fox. “It’s beyond mind-boggling when you think about the amount of change. Change is all about leadership.”

 

And the HIM director is responsible for spearheading that change, says Fox. “Not all of these [EHR] projects are successful the first time around. I think that when they’re not successful, it’s a failure of leadership,” she says.

 

The leadership process requires ensuring a seat at the decision-making table, and not all directors effectively advocate for this role, says Fox.

 

“In many organizations, the HIM director has been left out of the process,” she says.

 

Click here to learn how to avoid being “left out of the process.”

 

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