Nearly always, the first question I get asked in regard to information governance is “how do I sell the value? I know things are bad, but no one is willing to put money or resources behind the effort.”
An unpopular but effective technique is to let the train go off the track. Yes. Brace yourself and take the hit. You can see the information train barreling down the track, and part of the track is missing. Every instinct you have tells you to stop the train. You can’t stop the train. You can recommend stopping it, but many times another crisis du jour takes precedence. If you’re in this situation, follow these guidelines:
- Measure where you are now in whatever way you can
- Write down how you could tell that the train was going to go off the track
- Measure the impact of the immediate derailment—as well as adjacent costs
Now you’re prepared to make the case for information governance—a conversation you must be prepared to have.
Hair-Raising Tales of Information Woes
In an article from The Irish Times, the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) warned healthcare professionals that ignorance isn’t a good excuse anymore in regard to information governance practices protecting patient data. The article also highlighted several hair-raising stories of patient records found in bins or sent for transcription that were accessed and disclosed by unauthorized people.
Prof Grimson said, “Good information governance is a core component of safer, better healthcare. It is not something that takes place in isolation, or separate from healthcare provision, but underlies safe effective care.” Why? The answer is clear: more and more healthcare records are going digital.
This explosion of rich content is complicated by hand-written notes, which require transcription. Rich metadata and real-time monitoring of that information is also necessary—which patient hasn’t been seen in the last four hours? How many beds are available in a specific department? Were the test results returned according to service level agreements with the lab?
The article also cites “Internationally, it is estimated that almost 30 per cent of the total health budget is spent on handling information, collecting it, looking for it, or storing it.”
How Does Information Governance Help?
The following steps can help prevent hair-raising tales from happening:
- Establish access and privacy policies. Write them down and then track how compliant you are.
- Establish a global definition framework. What does it mean to be a patient? Is there a single record stored that represents that patient (no copy is laying around in a file cabinet?) Your access and privacy policies are much easier to enforce when you have this single definition and storage of a patient record.
- Use technology to automate as much of the data movement, enrichment, and transcription as possible. Reliable technology reduces the human touch points, giving you tighter control over access policies.
You can do some of these things before the train derails. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to let it derail to gain internal sponsorship. But you must be ready to describe which information governance principles you would use to solve the problem and prevent it from occurring again. You should also checkout What You Should Know about Information Governance: a Guide for Health and Social Care Staff. It helps health professionals understand both the law and best practices.
So, are you applying information governance principles to your patient data? What’s worked for you? What hasn’t?
