Free Essay on Leadership in Health Information Management

What are the most valuable aspects of leadership for HIM professionals in general?

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Health Information Management can be described as a practice through which digital and traditional medical information is acquired, evaluated, analyzed, and stored safely. This information is used in improving the standards of patient care. HIM professionals should be well versed with technological applications and advancements dealing with information management. Their main role is to ensure that all the health information regarding the patients is complete, precise, exact and safe.

Inspiring and motivating others: Great HIM leaders need to build a vision and inspire employees to reach those goals. She/he should assist their employees in connecting with what they do and the effect and impact it is having on the medical field and quality patient care.

Displaying integrity and moral ethics: HIM leaders should be sincere, truthful and trustworthy. This will ensure that the quality of data is accurate, comprehensive, consistent, precise and relevant. There will be no compromise and corruption of patients data.

Solves problems and analyze issues: All leaders are hired, up skilled and selected to deal with organizational mishaps, and consequently, improve customer service delivery. To do this, he or she needs superb and outstanding analytical capabilities.

Results oriented: Great HIM leaders should make things happen instead of letting things just go by. To achieve this, they need to be so perseverant, results oriented and get things done effectively and efficiently, they should get the most out of their talent at their disposal.

Communicate powerfully: HIM leaders should be able to pass their message across in a prolific manner. Irrespective of whether they are one on one conversation, phone calls, team meetings or discussions, these leaders efficiently communicate their ideas, plans, instructions and visions.

Have technical and professional expertise: Great HIM leaders have the two aforementioned set of skills, and this helps them to be invaluable specialists and masters in their respective disciplines.

Have a strategic perspective: HIM principals should have a long lasing vision and goals for the future. Their actions should show adroit planning; aiming at an end beyond the immediate action. Their goals should be carefully designed to serve a particular purpose and advantage.

Developing others: In as much as great HIM leaders strive to develop their technical skills as well their professional skills, it is imperative and important as well to develop the manpower and human resources under him. They should provide training, coaching and other incentives such as performance appraisal.

Innovative: Great HIM leaders should be innovative and be the ones leading change to the right direction.

What are the most valuable aspects of leadership for Medical Coding professionals specifically?

Detail oriented: Health records require a lot of focus and attention even in the minutest of details especially when it comes to recording, coding and documentation of all data and information about a patient. There is so much information regarding patients and as such, the ability to stay focused is very critical.

Discretion: Medical coding professionals have access to patients information which should be kept secret with restrictions on disclosure. All patients have a right to privacy, and revealing their information without their consent is a breach of the law. It is therefore important to be discrete and cautious.

Assertive: Showing a confident and forceful personality is another important trait. Because medical coding professionals interact with many people, it is vital to be bold especially when dealing with hostile patients. This trait helps in reducing tense flared up emotions of the patients and bringing the situation under control.

Analytical: Medical coding professionals should be able to comprehend and observe medical diagnoses. They should then evaluate and analyze it, modify patients info and data to correct codes, these are then used for medical records. To be able to carry out all these tasks, one needs to have an in-depth understanding of human anatomy and medical jargons and be methodical; using analysis or logical reasoning.

Technical: Because of the emergence of EHRs (electronic health records), the field of medical billing and coding is going to change so much. New technologies, innovations and software are replacing the old system; it is therefore up to these professionals to adjust to these changes.

Why are these aspects the most valuable?

The above aspects are most valuable as they help medical coding professionals in knowing the integration process between medical coding together with reimbursement rules, enables them to efficiently code provider diagnosis together with its related services, enables them to adequately tackle issues involving medical necessities, bundling matters, claims denials among others, enhances their medical coding practices and service delivery in physician based settings and improve the safety of their patients. These aspects also help in lowering overall cost of health care through eliminating coding complications.

What is your personal plan/strategy for building or fostering your leadership skills? Be specific, do not generalize.

Developing a leadership plan is going to help me in articulating my visions clearly, be able to define my goals and ambitions and assist me in committing to several actions which will ultimately lead me to my set targets and goals.

My plan will consist of six main steps; personal preparation and self-evaluation, articulate my vision and ambitions, set my goals, action plan my way to success, communicate my plans and then evaluate and monitor my general progress. In my individual preparation, I will identify my weaknesses and strengths, and areas where I need to improve. In articulating my vision, I will set targets where I ought to be in a couple of months or years and set the targets for my organization as well. Establishing my goals, which is my third step, will help me in establishing the direction of my career, challenge the rate of my growth, and increase my confidence and the benchmark of my accomplishments. My goals are going to be specific, measurable, acceptable, and realistic and set within a specific time frame. In my fourth step, which is putting into action my plans, entails several things, these are; writing down my goals and my plan, noting down the time fame, evaluating all the hindrances and coming up with contingency plans. These fourth step answers the what (goals), the how, when, where, who and the why questions. Fifth step entails sharing my plan with the relevant people, organization, departmental heads and getting their feedback. The last step I will monitor my overall progress, on either a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis, where changes need to be implemented, I will enforce them.

References

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http://career-advice.monster.com/job-interview/interview-questions/medical-billing-interview-questions/article.aspx

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