title: Performance improvement indicators of the Medical Records Department and Information Technology (IT) in hospitals.
abstract: Medical Record Department (MRD) has a vital role in making short and long term plans to improve health system services. The aim of this study was to describe performance improvement indicators of hospital MRD and information technology (IT).
  A search was conducted in various databases, through related keywords in articles, books, and abstracts of conferences from 2001 to 2009. About 58 articles and books were available which were evaluated and finally 15 of them were selected based on their relevance to the study. MRD must be capable of supporting tasks such as patient care and continuity, institute management processes, medical education programs, medical research, communication between different wards of a hospital and administrative and medical staff. The use of IT in MRD can facilitate access to department, expedite communication within and outside department, reduce space with electronic medical records, reduce costs, accelerate activities such as coding by use of coding guide software and facilitate retrieval of records that will ultimately improve the performance of MRD.
authors.affiliation: Sima Ajami, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Health Information Technology, School of Medical Management and Information Sciences, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Hezarjerib Avenue, Isfahan, Iran.
authors.forename: Sima
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ajami
authors.affiliation: Saedeh Ketabi, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Dept. of Management, School of Administrative Sciences and Economics, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.
authors.forename: Saedeh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ketabi
authors.affiliation: Fatemeh Torabiyan, Master student of Health Information Technology, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Hezarjerib Avenue, Isfahan, Iran.
authors.forename: Fatemeh
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Torabiyan
keywords: Indicator; Information Technology; Medical Records; Performance