Designing a Health Information Management model for elderly care centers in Iran

Nursing care facilities are among a variety of health care services. Nursing care facilities refers to a broad spectrum of health, social, supportive, medical and rehabilitation cares. People that lives in these facilities can choose their services. Then, nursing care facilities need some professional organizing and standards about health information management. This is a comparison-qualitative study. The data was collected from professional texts, articles, internet, and elderly care centers. In this research health information management in elderly care centers in America, Canada, Japan and Iran were compared. Considering similarity and differences characteristics of health information management, a model were suggested. Using Delphi methods, the recommended model was put into practice in two phases. The data collection tool were questionnaires. Findings were analyzed, and a final model for Iran was presented. Findings divide in to five section: 1. documentation elements (social data, clinical data), 2. documentation standard (general standards, authentication, permanency, manner of documentation, guidelines for handing correction, errors, omission) 3. storage and retrieval standards (policy and procedure of storage and retrieval, filing method, maintenance of record, time, manner of filing, filing equipment), 4. coding system(policy and procedure of coding, coding books) 5. health information management standards (request for medical record, confidentiality, release of information, maintenance standard, destruction, staff training). In conclusion, the final model of health information management tend to American and Canada model of health information management. It has the lowest similarity to Japanning model. It is suggested that guidelines about documentation elements, documentation standard, filing and retrieval, coding and health information management standards were published and updated annually.