Maintaining Data Quality at the hospital department level – The data work of medical secretaries

Knudsen, Casper; Bertelsen, Pernille

doi:10.3384/ecp187027

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 22 publications

(36 reference statements)

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“…While registration work in the regular workflow of the department relies on context sensitivity obtained through practical, daily experience, error correction is done by medical secretaries through automated lists of logical errors [16], our study finds, requiring a significantly higher level of expertise: "A prerequisite for that is also being able to understand the system, knowing the connections in the entire department as well. It's difficult just to come from the outside -you have to be familiar with the department's flow of different things" (Secretary in Cardiology).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…While physicians have the formal responsibility for meaningful and adequate clinical documentation, the practical work of registration and data quality management at department level is mainly delegated to medical secretaries [16]. The registration of patient trajectory data in the EHR and other information systems is a key task in the work portfolio of medical secretaries, usually undertaken as an integrated part of the workflow from patient referral to diagnosis, treatment, discharge, and follow-up.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While large-scale data involves the work of many people and professions [12], less prominent professions in health care remain under-researched. This paper positions itself in the body of literature aiming to understand and highlight the -often invisible [13] work of health administrative personnel in hospitals, such as secretaries, in Norway [14] and Denmark [8,10,[15][16][17]. These studies emphasize the significance of health administrative personnel in creating and sustaining cohesion in hospitals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These studies emphasize the significance of health administrative personnel in creating and sustaining cohesion in hospitals. In Danish public hospitals, medical secretaries work in decentralized units at department and ward levels, close to clinical practice and within a specific clinical specialty in which they build up their situated skills and knowledge [16]. Here, medical secretaries perform a wide variety of clinical-administrative work tasks, ranging from specialized data registration and coding to reception work, staff plans, department finance, management support, etc.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Medical Secretaries’ Registration Work in the Data-Driven Healthcare Era

Knudsen

Bertelsen

2023

Caring Is Sharing – Exploiting the Value in Data for Health and Innovation

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Through a qualitative study in six hospital departments in the Northern Region of Denmark, this article aims to shed light on how a non-clinical group, medical secretaries, supports clinical-administrative documentation as they translate between the clinical and administrative domains. This article shows how this demands context-sensitive knowledge and skills acquired through deep engagement with the full scope of clinical-administrative work at the department level. We argue that, given the increasing ambitions for secondary uses of healthcare data, specific clinical-administrative competencies beyond those of clinicians are increasingly necessary in the skillmix in hospitals.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Medical Secretaries’ Registration Work in the Data-Driven Healthcare Era

Knudsen

Bertelsen

2023

Caring Is Sharing – Exploiting the Value in Data for Health and Innovation

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Cultivating Data Practices Across Boundaries: How Organizations Become Data-driven

Pedersen,

Bossen

2024

Comput Supported Coop Work

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In this paper, we analyze the efforts of a public healthcare business intelligence unit to implement and disseminate their data products and thus make the healthcare organization more data-driven. The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a healthcare business intelligence unit (the BIU) whose mission is to improve healthcare efficiency and quality by making data and data analyses available to healthcare managers and staff. Their primary products consist of a data warehouse and Data Reports, both providing curated and daily updated data for healthcare staff to analyze and visualize. We conceptualize these Data Reports and the data warehouse as boundary objects through which cooperation around data between various users is achieved. Our focus is on the BIU’s efforts to introduce and promote the use of boundary objects to healthcare staff while providing them with the competencies to use them in practice. Efforts that we conceptualize as collaborative boundary work through which a new joint field of working with data is created between the BIU and healthcare staff. Based on the analysis of the ethnographic fieldwork, we point to three important aspects in creating this new joint field: Mobilizing interest, building local capabilities, and propagating data locally. The paper makes three contributions: It adds to our understanding of how new joint fields can be cultivated through collaborative boundary work to make healthcare data-driven; it contributes to the emergent field of data work studies; and finally, it adds to the largely normative literature on business intelligence and self-service business intelligence through an ethnographic analysis of its efforts to make healthcare data-driven.

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Digital health care and data work: Who are the data professionals?

Bossen

Bertelsen

2023

HIM J

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Background: This article reports on a study that investigated data professionals in health care. The topic is interesting and relevant because of the ongoing trend towards digitisation of the healthcare domain and efforts for it to become data driven, which entail a wide variety of work with data. Objective: Despite an interest in data science and more broadly in data work, we know surprisingly little about the people who work with data in healthcare. Therefore, we investigated data work at a large national healthcare data organisation in Denmark. Method: An explorative mixed method approach combining a non-probability technique for design of an open survey with a target population of 300+ and 11 semi-structured interviews, was applied. Results: We report findings relevant to educational background, work identity, work tasks, and how staff acquired competences and knowledge, as well as what these attributes comprised. We found recurring themes of healthcare knowledge, data analytical skills, and information technology, reflected in education, competences and knowledge. However, there was considerable variation within and beyond those themes, and indeed most competences were learned “on the job” rather than as part of formal education. Conclusion: Becoming a professional working with data in health care can be the result of different career paths. The most recurring work identity was that of “data analyst”; however, a wide variety of responses indicated that a stable data worker identity has not yet developed. Implications: The findings present implications for educational policy makers and healthcare managers.

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Maintaining Data Quality at the hospital department level – The data work of medical secretaries

Cited by 4 publications

References 22 publications

Medical Secretaries’ Registration Work in the Data-Driven Healthcare Era

Medical Secretaries’ Registration Work in the Data-Driven Healthcare Era

Cultivating Data Practices Across Boundaries: How Organizations Become Data-driven

Digital health care and data work: Who are the data professionals?

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