Information and health care delivery in COVID-19 Jamaica
OCTOBER 18-24, 2020 was recognised as Health Records Week under the theme: ‘Preserving Health Information Integrity for Future Development’. A number of activities highlighted the work and worth of the more than 900 employees who form the cadre of health information management practitioners across the island.
More commonly referred to as health records/medical records staff, these workers are critical to the efficiency of health care delivery. Though not often given t he recognition they deserve, these professionals provide the ‘shoulder’ on which the medical, nursing, and allied health staff stand in order to be functional. They must be applauded for keeping the health sector alive even during this pandemic.
Health information management (HIM) primarily revolves around effective management of health information to support patient care delivery, health administrative processes, and provide health statistics to inform policy-making, regulation and education.
The health record (docket – curse word in HIM) is a compilation of pertinent facts of a patient’s health history, including illness(es) and treatment(s), written by the health professionals contributing to that patient’s care. In simpler terms, it documents the who, what, when, where, why, and how of patient care. It contains sufficient data to identify the patient, support the diagnosis, justify the treatment, and accurately document the results. The quality of the data provided in the health record is critically relied on by clinicians and administrators and so, incomplete or missing data compromise patient care.
HIM practice incorporates a number of critical areas, including patient registration, appointment, statistics, qualitative analysis, medical data classification (coding) and medico-legal. The data in a health record ought to be of the highest quality and so the standards of the HIM profession have to be maintained to ensure the highest levels of confidentiality, reliability and transparency.
HIM operations in government facilities seemed not to have changed much, if any at all, during the novel coronavirus pandemic. Even though there are computerised systems of sorts within our hospitals, activities remain concentrated around the predominant paper-based system. As usual, there has to be face-to-face interactions within these health care settings and sometimes social distancing is not possible. HIM staff, however, reported that they received functional protective gear.
Fortunately, for us in Jamaica we have been spared the high mortality indices experienced in other countries, even though we are climbing. Kudos to our Government and public health practitioners. In order to effectively manage the HIM operations during this pandemic a protocol document was developed and circulated by the Ministry of Health and Wellness in keeping with the general guidelines outlined by the World Health Organization (WHO). This spoke to, among other things, the initiation of remote access (by telephone) in the handling of health information, especially in relation to isolation wards and quarantine areas.
Outside of the health care setting however, e-health systems underpinned the