@2024 Afarand., IRAN

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ISSN: 2383-3483    Journal of Police Medicine 2018;7(4):173-179

Background
Health information management as one of the key departments of the hospitals plays an important role in improving health care services.
Previous Studies
… [1-3]. Health information management department also plays an important role in accelerating the processes and modifying the therapeutic methods, indicating the medical staff and other personnel performances, defending patient and hospital rights, planning by health care organizations, and making the right and fundamental decisions [4]. … [5-7]. The assessment of hospitals in Iran in the past years has shown that Iranian hospitals are not qualified with desirable standards and quality services [8]. For example, Raeissi & Mohammadpour (2009) concluded that the performance of medical records department in half of the Qom educational hospitals was lower than optimal, so it necessarily should be optimized [9]. … [10-12].
Aim(s)
The aim of this study was evaluation of health information management department in two military hospitals.
Research type
The present study is a qualitative content analysis research.
Research society, place and time
The present study was conducted in 2016. The study population included employees of the health information management department at two military hospitals (A, B).
Sampling method and number
Purposeful sampling was done to select the participants with the maximum diversity for the subclasses of the health information management department, including coding, recording, statistics and admission. Inclusion criteria included working at one of the studied hospitals, at least three years of work experience, and a willingness to participate in the study.
Used devices&materials
Data was collected through interviews. The research objectives and characteristics of the research team were explained to the participants and the informed consent was obtained prior interviews. Semi-structured interviews were done face-to-face at the hospitals and at the resting time. The necessary arrangements were made prior interviews and the participants were asked about the appropriate time for being interviewed. Interviews were conducted by two researchers (A.G., H.A.). A guideline was prepared for interviews, using the experts’ views and the research team, based on the study objective. Each interview last between 40 and 60 min. Each interview was conducted by one of the researchers and the other interviewer was not present through the interview. The interviews were recorded using the Sony icd-px33 sound recorder. Note-taking was also used to record information through the interviews. The text of the interviews was listened for several times immediately after the end of each interview, and it was written to reach the saturation level in terms of similarities of the responses. In the present study, data saturation was reached with 13 interviews. Data analysis was done using MAXQDA10 software by content analysis [13]. .... [14]. For data analysis, the text of the interviews was first read. Following a general perception of the interviews, the text again was read word by word to extract the codes. After coding, the final analysis was done and the correlation between the codes and classes was determined. Agreements were made on the codes and the text of the interviews was reviewed by the research team using the review method. Finally, an overview of the health information management department problems and solutions was provided.
Findings by Text
Of the studied participants, 9 subjects (69.23%) were male and 4 subjects (30.77%) were female (Table 1). Health Information Management department problems: The findings of this study showed that the main problems of the health information management department in the studied hospitals were 5 main themes including, "technical and infrastructure", "educational", "financial", "organizational" and "human resources" (Table 2).Strategies to improve the performance of the health information management department: The strategies presented by the interviewees included 5 main themes and 10 sub-themes (Table 3).
Main comparison to the similar studies
The results of this study showed that the technical and infrastructure problems of the health information management department in the studied hospitals included weaknesses in information systems and inappropriate equipment and facilities, which is consistent with the Bouraghi & Khodadadi research [7]. In terms of weakness in information systems and equipment, the findings of the present study are consistent with Azizi et al. research [16]. The results of Ahmadi et al. research also show that 50% of the archives staff did not attend any courses related to medical records or medical archive [15]. In a study by Daniali et al. [20], it was also found that among Healthcare Network employees of the Khomein city, the lowest level of job satisfaction was related to the salary and benefits. … [17-21].
Suggestions
Considering the separate and enough space, hiring skilled personnel, and fixing the shortage of labor employed at the Health Information Management department are the most important strategies that should be regarded by the authorities and policymakers.
Limitations
None declared.
Conclusions
The most important problems of the health information management department are the infrastructure and technical, educational, financial, organizational, as well as the lack of skilled labor.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to all the participants for their cooperation in the research.
Conflict of interest
None declared.
Ethical Permissions
The research objectives and characteristics of the research team were explained to the interviewees and the informed consent was obtained prior interviews.
Funding Sources
The present study is extracted from a research approved by the Department of Health, Rescue And Treatment of I.r.iran Police Force, Applied Research Center (code No.: A-10-1392-1).

TABLES and CHARTS

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