President's Report

PRESIDENTS

REPORT

Hello Members,

I trust you all had a restful and happy Christmas and New Year break as we put 2020 behind us. With the COVID-19 vaccine starting to roll-out and we becoming accustomed to lockdown procedures, confidence in returning to a “normal” lifestyle is gaining momentum.

Strategic Planning

Since my time on the HIMAA Board, I have been involved with two strategic plans. My reflection is that these plans for HIMAA were unwieldy and unachievable. The strategic plans became a wish list of what HIMAA would like to achieve as we solicited for feedback widely. The Board then tried to distil this into a strategic plan. HIMAA has made some notable achievements in areas such as the Clinical Coding Practice Framework and successfully secured the next International Federation of Health Information Management (IFHIMA) Congress to be held in Brisbane. However, there are many agendas in the strategic plans that were not achieved. Ambition is laudable; however, we need to work within the capabilities and resources to implement our goals.

The Board met earlier this month and is committed to establishing a new strategic plan in the coming months that focuses on the core priorities for HIMAA and the HIM profession. We will share this with you in due course and hope that you can support us moving forward. As a professional Association with limited resource we rely on volunteers – you, the member, to help propel us forward.

National Office

The Board is pleased that Jae has settled into the CEO role and is positioning the national office to support our objectives. We also welcome Andrea Gall, our new Executive Support Officer, who will provide valuable support to both Jae and the Board.

As my family recently celebrated the Lunar New Year, it is said that hard work is rewarded in the year of the Ox. I know many of us at HIMAA are ready to accept the challenge.

Onwards and upwards! Cheens Lee President

cheensl@himaa.org.au

FROM THE OFFICE OF THE Chief Executive Officer

Welcome to 2021, the year of the Ox. I hope it has started well for you and that this is the year you surpass all your goals!

The HIMAA office was closed from 23 December 2020 to 4 January 2021, with staff taking advantage of additional leave throughout January. The staff has now returned to the office from working remotely and we will be welcoming the New Year with a fresh coat of paint for our meeting room and as well as a general office clean up.

When I wrote in November 2020, we farewelled Ragni Sarlas, Team Leader for Clinical Coding, for her 12 months’

maternity leave. We are happy to share the “after” picture in this edition as Ragni recently dropped into the office to showcase her gorgeous baby boy.

The Board held its first meeting in February along with many other Committees kicking off their meetings for the year. I was delighted to be invited to the annual Editorial Board meeting. With my background in publishing, I was happy to be in somewhat familiar discussion! It was humbling to experience the dedication of the Editorial Board members as well as the passion that they bring to the profession and to the HIMAA publications, HIM Journal and HIM-Interchange.

HIMJ is our flagship, peer-reviewed research journal recognised internationally. To receive the latest Table of Contents and be advised when new articles are published online, I encourage you to sign up for the Email Alerts at https://journals.sagepub.com/home/himd. I also wanted to draw your attention to the Expression of Interest (EOI) for the Editorial Board seeking a member. This and other great opportunities to join our HIMAA efforts can viewed at https://himaa.org.au/opportunities/.

In the meantime, enrolments have been flowing in for our 22274VIC Certificate IV in Clinical Classification course! A reminder that enrolments close on 22 March 2021.

HIMAA National Webinar Series 2021 kicks off on 26 February 2021 with ‘rpavirtual: A new way of caring’ presented by Eleni Efthymiou. Today is the last chance to register and learn about RPA Virtual Hospital and involvement by Health Information Managers in the enablement of data capture and supporting clinical workflows. More details in this issue.

We are also working on webinars that are designed for soft skills development and partnering with a professional consulting agency to deliver them. Documentation assessment and clinical engagement optimisation topics will be covered at a couple of CDI Webinars. If you have any ideas for topics and speakers for our PD Webinar Program in 2021, we would love to hear from you at events@himaa.org.au.

For further opportunities for PD and networking, please check out the NSW and Queensland branches hosting their first PD Events in March. You can view the details and register at https://himaa.org.au/calendar/.

Save the date: National HIM Awareness Week will be held on 10-16 May 2021.

Keep an eye out for further announcements on our website and in the next HIMAA Matters.

Finally, I would like to introduce you to our recruit, the Executive Support Officer, Andrea Gall. Andrea comes to HIMAA with strong project management skills gained from event management, with prior experience working as Executive Officer for a medical association. Her role is to support me and the Board along with the key Committees and everything in-between!

I remain keen to work with you in leading HIMAA to serve the health information profession. Please feel free to reach out to me to chat.

Jae Redden, CEO