Supervisory Medical Records Administrator - Walla Walla, United States - Department Of Veterans Affairs

Description

Summary

This position serves as the Supervisory Medical Record Administrator (MRA) and is the Chief, Health Information Management (HIM) Section of the Health Administrative Service (HAS) at the Jonathan M. Wainwright Memorial VA Medical Center (JMWMVAMC), Walla Walla, Washington.

Duties

The Supervisory Medical Record Administrator (Chief HIM) is delegated full program management and direct supervisory responsibility for 3 Medical Records Technicians Coders, 3 Release of Information (ROI) professionals, and 7 File Clerks. The MRA is the sites subject matter expert and highest level professional position at the facility with responsibility for the management and direction of the health information management program and services and provides technical advice, planning, and evaluation about health information management issues. Duties will include:

• Responsible for the administrative management of health records, which includes planning, managing, advising, and directing the health information program in accordance with applicable Federal laws, facility by-laws, VHA policy, The Joint Commission standards, the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF), and other regulatory and accrediting agencies.
• The Health Information Manager also creates and monitors systems to ensure accurate, timely, and complete health records, in accordance with VHA policy and The Joint Commission health information protocols.
• Measures ongoing intradepartmental performance by establishing priorities, collecting data, monitoring and reporting outcomes, using valid and reliable techniques to analyze trends and variation, and taking appropriate action based on findings.
• Responsible for auditing of all HIM functions and ensuring appropriate compliance.
• Responsible for all facets of health records management for the facility ensuring maintenance of complete, accurate, timely, clinically-pertinent, and readily-accessible patient health records, which contain sufficient recorded information to serve as a basis to plan patient care, support diagnoses, warrant treatment, measure outcomes, support education and facilitate performance improvement processes and legal requirements.
• Develops policies, processes, and procedures that address all VA, Federal, regulatory, and accrediting requirements for HIM.
• Evaluates health records program and independently determines the nature and extent of problem areas.
• Develops recommendations and solutions for program improvement.
• Develops and implements innovative solutions to correct technical, complex problems.
• Incumbent provides technical expertise in health records science and other very technical aspects of health information.
• Maintains all health information input into the local VistA database and assures timely transmission of that data into all VA centralized databases -most frequently those maintained at the Austin Data Processing Center.
• Must assure that all health information that is coded and abstracted meets the requirements of the VA and/or The Joint Commission and is consistent with professional health records standards.
• The incumbent is a key advisor to the Chief of Staff, Executive Leadership, and clinicians and is responsible for providing technical guidance on health information issues such as documentation requirements, liability issues, advance directives, informed consent, patient privacy and confidentiality, etc.
• Recommends improvements in documentation used to provide patient care, to optimize VERA workload, third party reimbursement and to manage resources.
• Completes internal quality assurance reviews and audits to ensure employee performance meets quality and quantity standards.
• Establishes monitors to ensure the timeliness of hard-copy and/or electronic health record entries and reports findings with subsequent trending of data.
• Provides management officials hard copy and/or electronic health record review results and trends on an ongoing basis.
• Maintains and reports delinquent records by number, type of deficiencies and responsible provider.
• Incumbent serves as a resource for patient data on both patient-specific and aggregate databases.
• Represents HAS and the Associate Director and acts as subject matter expert at the facility-wide Health Records Committee.
• The incumbent is a key member of the Quality Improvement (QI) team, works closely with QI personnel, and is responsible for assuring that the facility is following all The Joint Commission and CARF standards regarding health information.
• Incumbent is also responsible for assuring that all patients have a complete, accurate, and timely record of their medical care at the facility. Also, must assure that such information is appropriately stored and readily available for the provision of medical services to the patients.
• Incumbent is responsible for leading the automation of all health information systems.