Fundamental Information in Health Informatics
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The content of the first five chapters of the book can be applied to each of the remaining chapters. These chapters introduce the reader to terms, definitions, concepts, theories, and models that are used throughout the book, thereby providing the mental infrastructure for understanding the discipline of health informatics.
Why Informatics Is Needed in Healthcare: An Example The weblog GeriPal is an online community of interdisciplinary providers interested in geriatrics or palliative care. In August 2013, they published an article titled “Transfers from the hospital to nursing home: an F-grade for quality.”13 The article reviews a study published in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.14 GeriPal describes the finding from this research as follows: “A rather stunning study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society suggests the quality of communication between the hospital and the nursing home is horrendous.”13 Patients arrived at skilled nursing facilities (SNF) with missing or inaccurate information on their health status, their medication orders, and their functional abilities. The research found that care was routinely delayed and nursing hours were wasted trying to obtain the required information. Poor-quality discharge communication was identified as the major barrier to safe and effective transitions. Interestingly, nurses from the SNFs in the study identified a specific list of information and components that they need to facilitate a safe, high-quality transition. Nevertheless, the lack of an interoperable healthcare system providing clear, concise patient data/information between institutions makes the situation described in their study a common occurrence in SNFs across the country. Healthcare providers and informaticians who have a mental infrastructure and understand what is possible are the first requirement for building such an interoperable system.