AHIMA defines information governance (IG) as “an organization wide framework for managing information throughout its lifecycle and for supporting the organization’s strategy, operations, regulatory, legal, risk, and environmental requirements.”

Like other critical organizational assets—people, capital, inventory, etc.—information is a strategic asset that requires high level oversight in order to be able to effectively use it for organizational decision-making, performance improvement, cost management, and risk mitigation. IG ensures that information is trustworthy and actionable through alignment with organizational strategy and engagement of senior leaders and important stakeholders across the enterprise. In an increasingly connected world, this extends outside the proverbial four walls of an organization to make sure that information is available in the right place and the right time to support health and healthcare.

AHIMA is committed to advancing IG in the healthcare industry to ensure the quality and integrity of all types of information necessary to safe, high quality, cost effective care and the improvement of the health of individuals and populations. Both IG and information management are necessary to meet the existing and new requirements of an increasingly complex healthcare ecosystem.

Organizations across healthcare are utilizing AHIMA’s five (5) level Information Governance Adoption Model™ (IGAM™) for healthcare to assess and improve their IG posture and processes. IGAM™ is built using leading practices in IG and the AHIMA-developed organizational IG competencies, and incorporates more than 85 maturity markers or indicators of maturity in IG practices. These markers enable identification of maturity level, based on a five-level model across all 10 competencies.