Health Information Service

The Health Information Service (formerly Medical Record Department) is primarily responsible for the creating, care, storage, issue and retrieval of health information. Other responsibilities include the timely and accurate diagnosis and procedure coding, collection of statistical data on the hospital's activity and throughput, providing data for both internal and external requests and ensuring the design and content of the medical record meets the needs of the user and conforms with recognised standards.

Functions of the Health Information Service:

To retrieve, supply and maintain medical records as required for direct patient care.
To provide and maintain an efficient record storage system in which patient information is kept safe from loss, damage and unauthorised access.
To ensure diagnosis and procedure coding is performed in an accurate and timely manner to enable optimal diagnosis related group assignment.
To collect statistical data on the hospital's activity and throughput, and disseminate the information to management and external authorities within the required time frame for funding purposes.
To provide health information for both internal and external requests for planning, research, education, patient care, freedom of information requests and other purposes, in accordance with hospital policies and statutory requirements.
To maintain registers, indexes and databases of patients and health information.
To provide advice and education on casemix related issues, which involve documentation, coding and diagnosis related group allocation.
To ensure the design and content of the medical record meets the needs of users and conforms to recognised standards.
To provide advice to other hospital departments in relation to records (clinical and non-clinical), including design, retention, storage and disposal.

Health Information Management Education and Training:
www.latrobe.edu.au/publichealth/HIM/index.htm