Information is power--and to that end, information governance is crucial for the healthcare industry, American Health Information Management Association CEO Lynne Thomas Gordon recently told Hospitals & Health Networks.
When it comes to today's hospital C-suite, Gordon said that a facility's success will "boil down to who has the best data" and what's being done with it.
"You're going to start seeing a big divide between the haves and the have-nots in terms of data," she said.
Gordon (pictured) told H&HN that she doesn't think the C-suite recognizes the importance of ensuring information governance at healthcare facilities.
In order to fix that, she said, AHIMA is launching an initiative to promote information governance in healthcare. Gordon said that a lot of hospital employees are unaware of the various problems when it comes to data collection, adding that the health information management department should be responsible for data governance.
"We need to step up in healthcare as they've done in banking and retail," she said.
The association held a summit in May on the lack of strategies to govern data at healthcare organizations. A group of management experts from the association spoke at the summit, warning that programs were "less prevalent and mature in healthcare" than they should be, especially given the importance of information.
Additionally, AHIMA, in partnership with Cohasset Associates, conducted a survey on information governance in healthcare, which revealed that 35 percent of 1,000 respondents did not know if their organization had any information governance efforts underway, or did not recognize a need for it.
Last summer, AHIMA announced a partnership with the College of Healthcare Information Management (CHIME) on standards for the practice.
To learn more:
- read the H&HN interview