Health Information Management and Clinical Coding Workforce Issues.

Introduction Victoria has been in the fortunate position for some time of having an undergraduate course in health information management to provide a steady supply of HIMs to work in our hospitals, the DH, and in other related organisations. This has resulted in HIMs being the primary source of skilled personnel to undertake clinical coding services in Victorian hospitals. With the introduction of a casemix funding model in 1993, HIMs were well placed in hospitals to develop a high level understanding of the (then) Australian National Diagnosis Related Groups (AN-DRG), to participate in the education of management and clinical personnel regarding the new funding model, and to develop the in-house auditing programs for clinical coding and Abstract In early 2008, it became apparent that many Victorian hospitals were having diffi culty fi lling Health Information Manager (HIM) vacancies and that the service area most specifi cally affected was the clinical coding services. However, at that stage there was only anecdotal evidence to support the suggestion of a workforce shortage. There was no knowledge of the underlying issues and no understanding of the profi le of the existing HIM workforce in Victoria. Nothing was known about attrition rates and, importantly, no defi nitive knowledge of vacancy rates. As this perceived shortage of clinical coders had the potential to adversely impact on the casemix funding model, the Victorian ICD Coding Committee (VICC) decided to undertake a survey and they enlisted the help of the Victorian Department of Health (DH) Workforce unit to do so. Two follow-up studies were subsequently undertaken by a small graduate group2 within the DH. The fi ndings of the initial survey and the two follow-up studies supported the contention that Victoria had a workforce problem.