AHIMA: Dissertation Assistance

Sponsor: The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA)

The Dissertation Assistance Award program supports research undertaken as part of an academic program to qualify for a doctorate in areas relevant to health information management (HIM).

Guidelines and Eligibility

To qualify for an award under this program the student (principal investigator) must be enrolled in an accredited doctoral degree program in an area related to HIM (computer science, business management, education, public health, and so forth) and must be an active, associate, or student member of AHIMA. All requirements for the doctoral degree, other than the dissertation, must be completed by the award date.

Each recipient shall be limited to one funded grant per year. Ordinarily, the scope of the proposal shall be such that it can be completed within 18 months from the date of funding.

AHIMA/FORE Research Priorities

Role of Technology in Health Care

The priorities in this area include, but are not limited to, research that addresses:

-impact of implementing operational re-engineering through technology

-impact of technology on healthcare workforce retention and satisfaction

-electronic health record conversion practices, policies and standards

-collaborative strategies among technical and operational healthcare divisions

-benchmarking successful technology implementation projects

-impact of technology on delivery of healthcare

-impact of technology on consumer access to health information

-impact of technology on patient confidentiality

-impact of multimedia data disparity and access to health information

-analysis of retention guidelines and actual practice of record/data/information storage

-personal electronic health record as it relates to data quality and data organization

-barriers to adopting and using the electronic health record

-security issues

Quality of Coded Data

The priorities in this area include, but are not limited to, research that addresses:

-impact of standardized code sets on the quality of healthcare data

-impact of changing reimbursement rules on longitudinal data analysis

-impact of new classifications on data quality

-nomenclatures and classification systems and their impact on aggregate data reporting

-issues related to coding consistency, validity or accuracy

-impact of the electronic health record on data quality

-physician communications issues

-impact of HIPAA regulations and coding compliance issues on data quality

Clinical Outcomes (Data Quality, Impact and Use of Data)

The priorities in this area include, but are not limited to, research that addresses:

-impact of documentation variances on clinical management and outcomes

-impact of the use of data report cards and influence on physician practice patterns

-role of HIM in review, analysis, and reporting to improve patient care

-impact of documentation mapping to support severity of illness and resource utilization

-impact of implementing concurrent data integrity controls on patient care, severity profiling, case mix, and reimbursement

-impact of data quality on patient outcomes

-use of EHR technology to improve patient safety

Amount: There are no minimum or maximum grant request expectations, but the range of grants historically has been between $5,000 and $10,000.

Deadline: March 23 and September 21, 2007

For further information, please visit: http://www.ahima.org/fore/research/dissertation.asp