HIMAA Victoria

Authors: Jessica Chang and Emily Price, Health Information Managers at the Women’s Hospital, Melbourne.

Health Records and Information (HRI) is often the forgotten department that resides in the dark, dingy corners of hospital basements, but what everyone must know and remember is that a Health Records and Information department is the backbone of all hospitals. Like all good spines, Health Records and Information ensures the hospital has good structure through the provision of medical records and the collection of information for storage. The early relocation of the department challenged the strength of our spinal structure. Not only did we have to cope with the relocation of 140,000 records but we had to survive being separated from the main hospital, complicating the accessibility of medical records and threatening the ability to continue our vital functions.

Health Records and Information was one of the first departments to move. The actual relocation of medical records began on Friday 13th June 2008. As the clinical areas were remaining at Carlton, the first step in planning was determining which records needed to remain at Carlton for patient care, thus minimising the number of records that would need to be transported back to Carlton. The criteria for records that would remain at Carlton were as follows:

• Any patient with an Outpatient appointment the week beginning the 16th June
• All maternity patients 36+ weeks gestation or classified as ‘high risk’
• All patients that had an elective admission booked for the week beginning the 16th June

The next step was making sure that all medical records, excluding those that were needed for direct patient care, were returned to HRI. A stop on all non direct patient care requests for medical records was made and the Health Records and Information staff did sweeps of each and every office, department and floor to ensure that there were no medical records left behind. The cooperation from each area ensured that all medical records were returned in a timely matter.

Executing the move was the next big step, but the careful planning and training of Wridgeways staff ensured that the move of the 140,000 medical records was done in a timely and meticulous way. There were no lost or damaged records; there was no breach in confidentiality; there were no major mishaps. All medical records were safe and secure throughout the move and were successfully relocated to their correct homes.

Despite the planning in trying to determine which patients would more then likely attend The Women’s during this week, the request for relocated medical records flowed continuously throughout each day. Hospital activity reached unexpected highs and last minute bookings made in Outpatients meant that we were transporting approximately 100 records back to Carlton each day. An added complication of this was that some taxi drivers refused to transport records for us. This required HRI to get creative and we used all means of transport from taxis to buses to cars to bikes to Wridgeways trucks and our own two feet to deliver records back to Carlton. Any means of transportation that would get the record back to Carlton safely was used.

However with precision planning and dedication, all medical records made a successful journey to their new home assuring that the backbone of this hospital is still standing strong.

Filed under: Management, PD Group Blog