Health Information Professionals – the caretakers of health information

Meet Loma Linda University Health’s caretakers of health information – the Health Information Professional (HIP) department. The HIP team is made up of 165 employees representing Record Integrity, Release of Information, EMPI Management, Informatics, Coding and Document Imaging, and the supporting leadership team. Health Information Professionals play a crucial role in managing and safeguarding our patient's health information. Maintaining the integrity, accessibility, and confidentiality of health information, is a primary goal of HIP, which is critical to the delivery of high-quality healthcare service.  

HIP teams support patients in confirming the clinical information available to clinicians is complete, accurate, and timely. They are responsible for all medical record disclosures to patients, providers, regulatory agencies, payors, researchers, and public health offices. HIP impacts extend to the revenue cycle workstreams to ensure LLUH entities are reimbursed for the care provided.  

We are excited to share that the profession has seen a significant evolution in the past couple of years, primarily driven by advancements in technology, changes in healthcare regulations, and shifting patient expectations and participation. The HIP team has been actively pursuing technology solutions that improve efficiencies in the workplace. Two focus areas the department is working on are the document imaging operations and autonomous coding for our emergency department cases. We look forward to securing full benefit of this innovative technology as we work through completing these new implementations.

Here are some 2023 fun facts about the team:

• Coding staff coded 558,054 accounts for LLUMC, LLUCH, and LLUMC-Murrieta.  
• The Document Imaging Specialists team scanned a total of 3,226,040 pages. That is 11,742.79 inches of documents and equals 978 feet, which is only 272 feet shorter than the Empire State Building. 
• The Informatics/Number Control department completed a total of 18,486 MRN merges, 297 contact moves, and corrected a total of 1,367 on-call chart corrections.  
• The Record Integrity/Release of Information team received 24,726 audit requests, handled 72,936 calls, completed 90,6015 medical record releases, and 12,018,903 total pages of medical record disclosures.  

LLUH is grateful for the care and safekeeping our HIP team members provide to our patient’s health information. We encourage HIP teams to celebrate all their accomplishments within their department during the week of April 15-19, for Health Information Professionals Week.