The ongoing and massive shift by healthcare organizations from paper-based health records to digital systems has given rise to a critical need for effective information governance (IG) to manage, protect, and utilize healthcare data. Effective IG ensures data integrity, compliance, and improved patient outcomes. This post addresses the need for strategic alignment as the first critical step for promoting effective IG outcomes.
Importance of Strategic Alignment
Strategic alignment of IG goals is based on the broad recognition of the need for IG across all levels of an organization. For example, the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) found that 85% of healthcare professionals recognize the need for IG practices driven by data analytics, business intelligence, and quality data. A strategically aligned IG culture ensures that all levels of the workforce have real-time access to the data they need for effective decision-making, supporting the strategic use of information and communicating its importance across the organization.
How to Get There
The following steps provide a basic blueprint for how to achieve this kind of alignment.
Assess Your Current State and Organizational Goals. The first step in achieving strategic alignment of IG goals typically involves conducting a thorough internal audit of current IG practices and strategies, involving key stakeholders from different departments. A central goal of this type of audit is to uncover inconsistencies between sentiment and practices. For example, according to a recent McKinsey study, nearly 90% of health system executives report that digital and AI transformation is a high or top priority, but 75% of these organizations are not yet able to deliver on this priority due to insufficient planning and resources. The audit should start the process of figuring out why.
Develop a Comprehensive IG Framework. Based on the audit findings and internal priorities, organizations should then establish or seek to further develop their formal IG framework that includes policies, procedures, and standards for data governance, IT governance, and enterprise information management. This includes incorporating best practices for technology solutions selection, deployment, and performance measurement and a focus on developing and institutionalizing decision rights and accountability frameworks.
Ensure Executive Sponsorship. The importance of ensuring continual executive leadership support for an IG program cannot be overstated. IG programs often involve significant cultural changes and shifts from the “way that we have always done things.” And, the combination of support and funding is crucial for driving organization-wide cultural change.
Engage Stakeholders. As we all know, executive support is not nearly enough to boost organizational transformation. Because of the broad based nature of IG efforts, healthcare organizations must successfully engage stakeholders from legal, IT, clinical, and administrative departments to ensure comprehensive risk identification and process development. And it is critical to ensure that non-executive leadership is on board, informed, and engaged.
Invest in Training and Awareness Programs. Developing training programs to educate employees about IG principles, practices, and their roles in maintaining data integrity and compliance is also critical. In particular, all employees should be able to understand the significance of IG and adhere to established policies and, specifically, how those policies impact their specific roles. Given the stakes of non-compliance for healthcare organizations, is not enough to take a one-size-fits-all approach to IG.
Leverage Advanced Analytics and Data Management Tools. To address the constant and ever-increasing creation of data, healthcare organizations must invest in robust data management tools to ensure data quality, accessibility, and security. And, it is no secret that healthcare organizations that prioritize digital transformation often see significant improvements in operational efficiency and patient outcomes.
Audit, audit, audit. Compliance is an ongoing effort and process and IG, like patient care, is not the kind of effort that can be conducted once and forgotten! Organizations that are serious about IG and compliance must continually establish and adapt metrics to assess the performance and impact of their IG initiatives regularly using tools like AHIMA’s Information Governance Adoption Model® to help assess their IG readiness and maturity.
Put simply, strategic alignment helps to ensure that IG practices are integrated into the organizational culture, enabling better decision-making and fostering a secure, efficient, and compliant healthcare environment. And, by aligning IG initiatives with organizational goals, healthcare organizations can successfully navigate the complexities of digital transformation and meet their IG goals.
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