WVU Health Informatics and Information Management (HIIM) program director to speak at national convention

Sally Lucci, program director for the bachelor’s degree program in Health Informatics and Information Management (HIIM) at West Virginia University, will be addressing how health information management (HIM) departments should react after a violent incident, at the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) annual convention and exhibit taking place Oct. 6-8 in Los Angeles, California.

In 2015, researchers at Brown University reported that gun violence in hospitals, while not exactly common, has risen in terms of the number of incidents over the past decade. From coast to coast, between 2000 and 2015, the following regions of the U.S. reported the number of shootings in hospitals:

• West: 42
• Midwest: 56
• South: 105
• Northeast: 38

“As HIIM professionals, we need to be very familiar with our hospital policies and procedures and make sure those policies address these types of events so our staff can take actions that are based on policy,” said. Lucci. “Hospital staff regularly train for emergencies and disasters, but I found that we learn so much about what to do after such an event. And no one talks about what happens afterwards.”

Read the full story in the Journal of American Health Information Management Association