The Board met on Monday evening 24 April 2023 as part of our scheduled meetings for the year, with full attendance. As this was the first meeting for our latest Director, Natasha Prasad, we concluded she passed with flying colours, as if she won’t!
Our agenda covered updates on current operations and also on projects which are works-in-progress. Particular focus has been given in the past month to Education Services and the Education Committee to define how they are ensuring future sustainability for the profession and for HIMAA.
The Board met with members of the Education Committee on 21 April 2023 to
revisit key objectives for the continuing viability and progress of tertiary education, and to discuss HIMAA’s strategic and operational plans to achieve same. We have some actions to follow-up from this session.
During the Board meeting Lyn Williams, Director of Education Services, provided an update on the challenges confronting Education Services and the advancements they have made. These include, but are not limited to, the winding up of Certificate IV, the Advanced and Diploma coursework, quality assessment of students, and the Aptitude test validation process.
As a Recognised Training Organisation HIMAA must ensure that both the Board and Education Services meet the requirements of the Australian Skills Quality Authority.
The main challenge for Lyn, like most of us, is the replacement of suitably skilled staff. Anyone interested in pursuing a career with Education Services please contact Lyn. Also, you could share this expression of interest with your colleagues.
At the end of March Jae and I enjoyed the good company of some of our enthusiastic Queensland Branch members. Not surprisingly, the conversations had a similar theme to our earlier visit to Victoria, namely workforce, shortage of skilled staff, and the value, visibility and recognition of qualified Health Information Management and clinical coding skills within the Health sector. We were pleased to hear about the work being conducted at the Queensland Department of Health on the support they can offer to progress the workforce discussions, which we will be pursuing.
Kathleen Rogers, Jae and I also had the pleasure of meeting with Sue Walker (Course Co-ordinator) and Prof Michelle Gatton (Professor of Public Health) at Queensland University of Technology to discuss the Degree course and its ongoing security. We were reassured that this tertiary course is anticipated to continue, with a few actions to support the course as an ongoing concern.
I will be reaching out to our other Branch Convenors to organise a local catch-up, getting to learn what is important at Branch level and how HIMAA can influence the conversations and topics of importance in our digital health environment.
Apart from our enthusiasm for the October 2023 Joint 20th IFHIMA Congress and 40th HIMAA National Conference, we are concentrating on the impact of the introduction of ICD-11. We will keep everyone updated with our future direction on this specific topic.
Catherine Garvey
President
