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HIM Role in EHR Management and the Legal EHR
The EHR and EHR management are expanding the roles and responsibilities of health information management (HIM) practitioners. As the traditional custodian of the paper medical record and medical record system, HIM professionals are trained to ensure the quality, privacy, and integrity of the EHR. Today, the EHR can, and often does, reside in several different information systems. HIM professionals ensure information management standards are consistently applied across these various systems in order to maintain a high level of integrity for the healthcare organization’s records.
HIM professionals are ideally suited to provide healthcare entities with the necessary leadership to ensure the EHR and the EHR systems are optimally managed. The challenges associated with maintaining legally sound health records in the hybrid and electronic information environments require clear identification of the issues, re-thinking of traditional record and information management practices, and development and application of new strategies for managing health information. As experts in the requirements for health records, HIM professionals serve as the leaders in healthcare organizations and in their professional community for ensuring such requirements are identified and met.