[From clinical coding to knowledge management in healthcare organizations]

ABSTRACT

Clinical coding is a translation of medical documents to diagnostic, procedure and financial codes. Health care data are displayed with codes. Clinical coding is a knowledge process in health care and include concepts of knowledge management such as codification of .knowledge, storage of knowledge, packaging of knowledge with its details and delivery to users and coordinating of intellectual resources. Conversion process of data into knowledge is a continual process in health care industry and knowledge created in any phase is a data for upper phase too. So clinical coding performs organization of knowledge is related to diseases. The databases taken from clinical coding process display diagnostic data and codes in relational table formats of data mining and On-Line Analysis Processing [OLAP] can discover knowledge from it. Furthermore creation of On-Line Discussion Group can play important role in knowledge sharing and improvement in process of Health care information management particularly clinical coding. Health care information management professions need to identify real situation of clinical coding and impact of their functions on knowledge management in healthcare and health decisions and thus improve their practice with knowledge management tools