The Hospital health information management (HIM) is mandated with the task of reducing the processing time of medical records, use technology to streamline the data management process, meet regulatory requirements and better utilize hospital resources (Bhagat, Wang, Khasawneh, & Srihari, 2009) . However, automating a hospitals electronic health records (EHR) does not necessarily translate to improved service delivery. The hospital may end up automating prior inefficiencies that made it difficult to share health information with physicians, nurses, insurance companies and affiliate health institutions. A healthcare institution that lacks systematic approaches to handling complaints within a healthcare institution might end up handling risky litigations from its patients.
The A3 Problem Solving Report
The A3 problem solving report is one tool that can be used by hospital administrators to solve numerous complaints and improve the organizations work processes. The tool uses an A3 sized paper having (11” x 17”) measurements (Sobek & Jimmerson, 2004) . The first step to analyzing a complaint is by mapping the hospital work flow to a specific procedure within the hospital. For example, if the hospital observes that they require 200 procedures to treat an average patient, all the wasteful procedures must be analyzed (Ajami, Ketabi, Sadeghian & Saghaeinnejad-Isfahani, 2015) . Some of the complaints the hospital is facing under the data retrieval procedure might be; a) locating patient charts is taking too long therefore causing long wait times, b) interruptions to the data retrieval process through unnecessary phone calls. These complaints are traced from the time a patient is admitted into the hospital to the point of discharge. The wasteful procedures are therefore eliminated if they prolong the response time to patient care. The hospital will therefore be able to redirect its operations to value added activities that help improve healthcare services.
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The MECCA (Medical Errors and Complications Causal Analysis)
The incident analysis tool known as MECCA (Medical Errors and Complications Causal Analysis) is used within the medical profession to improve the processes and safety of health care systems (Van Vuuren, Shea, van der Schaaf & Technische, 1997) . It focuses on three main components; a) The causal tree incident description method; b) the Eindhoven classification model of system failure and; c) the classification action matrix.
The causal tree is used to map the critical activities within the hospital are to uncover any incidences that might occur within the system. The Eindhoven classification model is therefore used to classify the root causes of system failures that might include human, organizational or technical causes. The technical causes of these complaints are identified by analyzing the design of the hospital electronic health records and data sharing system. This is meant to reveal the bottlenecks and design problems that cause unnecessary delays within the system. The contributing factors to these complaints are then analyzed from an organizational level to identify any hospital procedures and policies that fail to prioritize core patient based services such as charts retrieval over emergency situations. The technical user problems are finally analyzed to identify the challenges of using the new system. These technical problems are then classified base on the skill level and knowledge behaviors of the Hospital health information management (HIM) department.
Data Gathering Tools
Well documented incident reports are crucial for identifying risky practices and behaviors within the hospitals information management system (Jylhä, Bates & Saranto, 2016) . The number of clinical incidences or accidents that become subject to complaints will be collected using the actual medico legal claims. This tool will be used to handle legal complaints facing the hospital from non-tertiary health institutions. The Severity Assessment Code (SAC) will be used to identify complaints that lead to serious harm of the patients or even death. These legal complaints and incidences will then be reported to the risk cover state solicitors office. The RiskCover department will work with the hospital to make appropriate payments for the settlement of any claims though the legal department.
The hospital will also use the Datix CFM tool to report high risk complaints to the senior management and the patient safety surveillance unit (PSSU) (Hotton, Jordan & Peden, 2014) . The PSSU requires that all hospitals should report their complaints information handling systems to the state department every month. These complaints are grouped into subcategories identifying the issues causing such incidences, the total number of complaints and complaint resolution strategies implemented by the hospital. The higher the number of complaints reported by a health institution the lower the safety standards that might be reported by the patients.
References
Ajami, S., Ketabi, S., Sadeghian, A., & Saghaeinnejad-Isfahani, S. (2015). Improving the medical records department processes by lean management. Journal of education and health promotion , 4 .
Bhagat, A., Wang, S., Khasawneh, M. T., & Srihari, K. (2009, April). Enhancing hospital health information management using industrial engineering tools. In Proceedings of the Society for Health Systems Conference and Expo (pp. 1-4).
Hotton, E., Jordan, L., & Peden, C. (2014). Improving incident reporting among junior doctors. BMJ Open Quality , 3 (1), u202381-w2481.
Jylhä, V., Bates, D. W., & Saranto, K. (2016). Critical factors in the information management process: the analysis of hospital-based patient safety incident reports. Finnish Journal of eHealth and eWelfare , 8 (4), 164-176.
Sobek II, D. K., & Jimmerson, C. (2004). A3 reports: tool for process improvement. In IIE Annual Conference. Proceedings (p. 1). Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE).
Van Vuuren, W., Shea, C. E., van der Schaaf, T. W., & Technische hogeschool (Eindhoven, Pays-Bas). (1997). The development of an incident analysis tool for the medical field (p. 1997). Eindhoven University of Technology, Faculty of Technology Management.
