Authors (including presenting author) :
Lau EHY(1), Fung VH(1), Hung VYS(1), Pow MKY(1)
Affiliation :
(1)Information Technology and Health Informatics Division, Hospital Authority Head Office
Introduction :
Training on management of Patient Master Index (PMI) is essential to all colleagues, in particular for those handling patient registration, so that they can register patients accurately. In the past decade, PMI training in hospitals were self-developed and they were looking for a standardized set of training materials to reduce variance in practices. Moreover, even within the same hospital, the ways of coaching newly joined colleagues on PMI management might different among supervisors. With the high turnover rate of contract staff in recent years, it was a challenge for hospital management to monitor staff’s training records and to ensure colleagues’ competence on their daily work. To address the training needs of PMI management, the Health Informatics (HI) Section of HA Head Office planned to form a preparatory group to develop a training courseware in a one-year period.
Objectives :
(1) To develop the PMI training courseware and stratify the content into basic and advance levels to meet the learning needs of staff with different levels of competence, e.g. newly recruited, junior and senior staff (2) To provide the courseware to a broad spectrum of staff who handle PMI, e.g. from staff working at enquiry/registration counter and even clinical colleagues (3) To ensure the staff competence on PMI management with traceable training record and quiz result
Methodology :
To deliver the PMI training courseware, a preparatory group was formed by members of HI Section plus the Medical Record Managers from 5 clusters to: (1) define training objectives (2) ensure the training content encompassed the essential PMI principles (3) design a bank of quiz questions for colleagues to demonstrate PMI knowledge by answering all questions correctly
Result & Outcome :
The preparatory group defined the content and the quiz of the PMI courseware within the planned one-year timeframe. The courseware was developed and has been available in HA eLearning Centre for colleagues since February 2017. The major acute hospitals of 7 clusters have adopted the courseware for PMI training in new staff training program. In a 22-month period, over 3700 staff has completed the training. Around 1800 (48%) of participants were registration colleagues and the rest included doctors, nurses, allied health colleagues, etc. It is encouraging that the courseware is broadly adopted by hospitals with the learning needs of colleagues being fulfilled. It is concluded that the eLearning courseware is a useful training material for PMI management and it is reasonably believed that staff’s PMI knowledge could be enhanced through the courseware.