1. Awards/Recognition: Please list previous awards or recognition received by your HIM team.

We were awarded the 2008 McKesson VIP Award for Horizon Patient Folder and Physician Portal, which was related to our utilization of the EHR system. Our department director, Jean Ward, RHIA is the President Elect for ILHIMA. Also, one of our team members, Andy Duncan, was awarded our organization's January 2008 Employee of the Month for the Support Category.

2. Initiative: Provide examples of your team's initiative to improve the work environment/profession as a whole.

Our department took the initiative to be proactive in helping our team members handle the upcoming changes as our organization implemented the EHR and speech recognition systems. Human Resource personnel presented a workshop on change management to our team members to help us recognize how to deal with change. Our director and manager like to think outside the box in terms of how to cultivate new ideas in team members to help with problem solving. They give team members the opportunity to share their own input and ideas. In terms of improving the profession, our department takes on students who are enrolled in degree programs in the health care field to complete internships in our department as a way of offering professional practice experiences for these students. The employees in the department are given an opportunity to share their knowledge and experience in teaching the students how to perform their job responsibilities. Several of the students who completed such internships were later hired on in the department.

3. Adaptability: How has your department shown that it is adaptable to the changes and "upheavals" currently going on in the HIM field and health care in general? What has your department done to support the future implementation of an electronic health record system?

Through implementation of the EHR and speech recognition systems, we have been able to improve processes and workflow to provide access to health information in a more timely and efficient manner by decreasing turnaround time for getting charts online. Our team members have also had to acclimate to changes in their skills and job performance expectations with the transition from a paper to a paperless department. We have also adapted to the changing needs of our team members while utilizing changes in technology to allow some of our team members to telecommute for their jobs in medical coding and transcription allowing them to work from home.

4. Teamwork: Provide examples of how your team has worked together to accomplish certain goals.

Our team is patient-driven, responsible, real, responsive, and ready, and we believe in our organization's mission statement that we are committed to delivering outstanding healthcare period. Our team is composed of three workgroups including imaging, coding, and transcription that have defined roles, responsibilities, and priorities to achieve our department goals. We work as a team daily to get the patient charts prepped, scanned, and indexed in a timely fashion to meet the needs of our end-users. We also work closely with other departments in our organization to provide them with the information they need. In our department, we have also implemented the FISH philosophy, which is a workplace management system that emphasizes four key concepts: play, make their day, be present, and choose your attitude. The "fishtheme" has been integrated into our department gatherings and celebrations as a reminder of the philosophy.

5. Above and Beyond: Provide exemplary instances of how your team has gone "above and beyond" to make a difference in your facility.

Our organization's expectation is to score 95% or higher in order tobe in the top 5% of everything we do, i.e. patient, physician, and employee satisfaction, outcomes, etc. On the most recent physician survey, our HIS Medical Transcription Department scored the highest overall for physician satisfaction. Through implementation of new technology in our department, we have decreased turnaround time of availability of the health information that we manage as we work towards the goal of making the information available in real time. For physicians and mid-level providers, we provided one-on-one training sessions with our IT department to teach them how to use the new system to access the EHR and dictate on the new system. We also provide physicians with current updates on any pertinent information at Facts on Feast, which is a quarterly breakfast to inform physicians about any new updates that relate to the organization. Our team participates in the United Way and Gifts from the Heart campaigns, which are associated with our organization to raise money to help those in need. Each year, our team also adopts two Christmas families to provide gifts and food baskets by having our team members donate items. After taking donations in the office, several of the team members go shopping together to purchase items as well, and then, another group of team members will wrap the gifts. By participating in these community outreach projects each year, we have been able to make a difference in our community while strengthening the bond we share in the department by helping those in need.

6. Knowledge: Provide examples regarding how your team has shown the ability to learn new technologies (software applications, etc.).

Our team has learned new software applications associated with our implementation of EHR and speech recognition systems. The change has involved our document capture technicians learning how to use digital scanners to scan documents for the EHR. Also, our transcription department has learned to transcribe in a new software application that is Word based, which has impacted the productivity tools they utilize to transcribe. Our team also utilizes teleconferences, webinars, in-house inservices, and subscriptions to journals and other pertinent reading material relating to our health care profession to learn about new software applications. Team members also attend local, state, and national Continuing Educational Conferences to stay current with changes in our profession.

7. Additional Information: Why else does your team deserve to be recognized as the 2008 HIM Team of the Year?

Who is the Health Information Services Department at Methodist Medical Center? We are the Health Information Services Department for Methodist Medical Center, which is a 336-bed hospital located in Peoria, Illinois. Our organization is accredited by JCAHO, and we are also a Magnet hospital. Our HIS team has 39 members - 38 female and 1 male. The average tenure in our department is over 15 years. Our team is composed of one director, one manager, two tumor registrars, one HIS physician office support person, one lead coder, eight medical coders, one lead imaging technician, three document capture technicians, seven index/analyst technicians, one quality control person, eleven medical transcriptionists, and two release of information personnel. Our team should be awarded the HIM Team of the Year because we are a technologically advancing health information services department that has taken the initiative to go above and beyond to efficiently and effectively manage health information for our organization.