Amy Arnold works in various departments at a local North Carolina hospital and has gained experience in emergency department, medical staff office, information technology, performance improvement, and health information management over six years. She is interested in the role of health informatics in healthcare. Over six blog posts, she will discuss the evolution of health informatics, legal and ethical issues in health information management, the use and impact of statistics and electronic medical records in healthcare, current health information systems, and continuous quality monitoring and accreditation.

1. Health Informatics
Amy Arnold
HCA 496
Olivia Pollard
August 11, 2014

2. About Me
As an employee at a local hospital in North Carolina over the past six years I have been afforded
the opportunity to work in and with various departments of the organizations. These
departments include the emergency department, medical staff office, information technology,
performance improvement and health information management. Throughout this experience I
have gained knowledge of the ever changing roles within the organization and the healthcare
sector in general. I have grown fond of the specific role of informatics within the healthcare arena.
The following blogs will serve to help share both my experience and the knowledge I have gained
combined with research I find on the following six topics:
–Health Care informatics evolutions and transitions to today
–Legal and ethical aspects of health information management
–Statistics for health sciences and its impact
–The impact of the electronic medical records integration
–Current health care information systems
–Continuous quality monitoring and accreditation in health care.
The following slides will outline what makes these topics important to informatics and/or
healthcare as a whole.

3. Healthcare Informatics evolutions and transitions to
today
• Without knowing where we have come from we cannot be sure the
best way to move forward with our goals. In 1950 bioinformatics
was introduced to the world with the utilization of large mainframe
computers. In the 1960s this was followed by the introduction of
medical informatics by larger academic medical organizations when
they began utilizing electronic medical records. The most recent
addition was in the 1990s when public health informatics began to
focus on the population as a whole. (Mullner, et.al.,2006).

4. Legal and ethical aspects of health information
management
• The legal and ethical issues that those in the healthcare profession
see are most commonly related to HIPPA. This law was created as a
way to protect the privacy of patients. As a result of such laws and
regulations like this those in the health informatics arena most be
knowledgeable in this area in order to make the proper decisions
when implementing or creating new systems to meet user needs.

5. Statistics for health sciences and its impact
• Statistics can be seen in many sectors of our society. We look to
statistics to determine whether the crime rate in a neighborhood is
low enough to warrant our decision to move as well as to determine
if a product has a high enough satisfaction rate. While these
statistics are relatively basic statistics in health care help to
determine things such as, where money is invested for public health
initiatives.

6. The impact of the electronic medical records integration
• There is no doubt over the last several years that electronic medical
records have become more prevalent in our society. Over the years
I have worked as the leader of a group that served to help build the
electronic charting system within Meditech for both our nursing and
physicians within the emergency department. The impact of such a
system both on the users (nurses, CNAs, physicians, etc.) and the
patient is large. This integration has often been a sore spot for many
healthcare providers due to increased time documenting as well as
the costs of the system. However, studies have shown there are
significant medical benefits. In one such study a group showed that
there was a 17% decrease in the prescribing of two drugs that could
pose significant interactions when drug interaction software was
included in the integration of the electronic medical records
(Andersson, et.al., 2013).

7. Current health care information systems
• There are many available health care information systems. This
causes an opportunity for an organization to choose the perfect
system for their needs, but also poses a risk that the organization
might not choose wisely. In this case the organization could face the
risk of having spent a lot of money only to have to purchase a
second system spending even more money.

8. Continuous quality monitoring and accreditation in
health care
• The United States Department of Health and Human Services states
“quality improvement consists of systematic and continuous actions
that lead to measurable improvement in healthcare services and the
health status of targeted patient groups” (US DHHS, n.d., para 1).
Quality Improvement efforts are a large part of the hospital I work
at with our Performance Improvement department spending a great
deal of time abstracting and reviewing the core measures from The
Joint Commission (an accreditation body for hospitals and other
organizations). This is a valuable tool for any organization as it
helps to ensure the patient is receiving the utmost care. By
participating in in ongoing, continuous, quality monitoring program
an organization is better able to keep an eye on what is happening
within the organization and therefore initiate changes and more
readily see if these initiatives are fixing concerns.

9. References
Andersson, M.L., Bottiger, Y., Lindh, J.D., Wettermark, B., Eiermann, B. (3/2013). Impact of the drug-drug interation
database SFINX on prevalence of potentially serious drug-drug interactions in primary health care. European
Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 69.3, pgs. 565-571. Retrieved from Proquest Database.
Mullner, R. M., & Chung, K. (2006). Current issues in health care informatics. Journal of Medical Systems, 30(1), 1-
2. Retrieved from the ProQuest database.
US DHHS. (n.d.) Quality Improvement. Retrieved from
http://www.hrsa.gov/quality/toolbox/methodology/qualityimprovement/