Why HIM Needs a Strategic Plan
Strategic planning gives an HIM department a documented direction that aligns its priorities with the broader goals of the healthcare organization, such as expanding value based care contracts, implementing a new EHR, or improving revenue cycle performance. RHIA candidates in leadership focused questions must understand the strategic planning process from environmental assessment through implementation and monitoring.
Environmental Assessment
A SWOT analysis, examining internal strengths and weaknesses alongside external opportunities and threats, is a foundational tool. For an HIM department, strengths might include a highly credentialed coding staff, weaknesses might include outdated release of information technology, opportunities might include a planned EHR upgrade, and threats might include a nationwide coder shortage.
Setting Strategic Goals
Goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound, commonly remembered through the SMART acronym. A vague goal such as "improve coding quality" is far less useful than a SMART goal such as "increase coding accuracy from ninety two percent to ninety six percent within twelve months through targeted audits and education."
The Balanced Scorecard
Many HIM leaders use a balanced scorecard approach, tracking performance across multiple dimensions rather than financial metrics alone, typically including financial performance, internal process efficiency, customer or stakeholder satisfaction, and learning and growth. This prevents a department from optimizing one metric, such as coding speed, at the expense of another, such as accuracy.
Aligning with Organizational Strategy
An HIM strategic plan should never exist in isolation. If the organization's overall strategy emphasizes growth through ambulatory expansion, the HIM plan should address scalable release of information processes and outpatient coding capacity to support that growth rather than focusing exclusively on inpatient operations.
Monitoring and Adjustment
Strategic plans require periodic review, typically annually, comparing actual performance against targets and adjusting tactics as organizational priorities or the external environment shifts, such as a new regulatory requirement or a shift in payer mix.
Exam Tip
Leadership scenario questions often present a departmental problem and ask which planning tool is most appropriate. A question asking for an initial assessment of internal and external factors points to SWOT analysis, while a question about tracking multiple performance dimensions over time points to a balanced scorecard.