Jamie was recently hired as the director of HIM operations within a 500-bed teaching facility. Jamie is a recent graduate of an online HIM bachelor's program and she successfully obtained her registered health information administrator (RHIA) certification within the last month. The director of HIM operations is responsible for the following functions within the HIM department as well as managing the 25 employees that perform these functions:

Release of information (ROI)

Management of outsourced transcription

Patient education for the use and access to patient portals

The management issues present within the operations workgroup that Jamie will be managing are:

High employee turnover rate

Lack of standardized training programs for new employees

Distrust of previous management by employees

Turnaround times for ROI requests exceed the required benchmarks

Job descriptions for the employees are outdated

Customer service skills are not optimal as evidenced by the number of complaints received by the senior director of HIM

Assumptions

The director of HIM operations reports to the senior director of HIM. The senior director of HIM has a very hands-off management style and allows her management team to function independently.

Jamie has four years of HIM work experience as an inpatient and outpatient coder for this same healthcare organization.

The manager or leader plan will include goals that incorporate a variety of management and leadership theories.

Benchmarking data will be collected upon Jamie's hire and improvement must be shown within the goals for each area of the operations workgroup (including transcription, ROI, and patient portals) after one year. If improvements are not noted, Jamie's role as director will be reassessed (note that creation of benchmarks is not an objective of this manager or leader plan).

Deliverables

make one-year manager or leader plan for Jamie to utilize as she improves the deficiencies as noted within her workgroup. The plan should include three improvement goals for each area that reports to her and should incorporate improvements for the items that are noted as deficiencies for the operations workgroup. The improvement goals should include support from a variety of management and leadership theories outlined within the chapter. The goals should also include realistic time frames for completion.