Appraising the standards of a typical health records department

Abstract

Health Records Department is the sole department responsible for the creation and management of patients’ health records. The department's prime objective is the provision of patient health records in a timely manner to different hospital units in order to assist physicians, allied health professionals and other hospital staff in the provision of quality care to patients. The department is not only the first port of call and last port of call but it is equally the image builder of the hospital. Its services cut across all specialties and this explains why the department is a pivot around which other departments revolve in any hospital. The importance of standards in ensuring uniformity and as measures established to serve as criteria or level of reference for determining the accomplishment of objectives was underscored. This paper examined the standards of a typical health records department and sections it should be organized into and the three different opinions of sections within the department reviewed were presented. It was concluded that for the department to carry out all its enumerated functions, it has to be a standard department, which is organized to establish structures that target the achievement of the set goals and objectives. If standard is to ensure quality of service, uniformity and better outcome then, the technology that will drive the change and improve the standards and service should be embraced. The paper therefore, recommended that the standards of a typical health records department should be based on the types of services available and the size of the hospital and that consideration should be given majorly to the deployment of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) as a way of improving the standards of the department.