HIM Team Excellence Awards: 

An award to recognize outstanding efforts by a team in one of the 3 categories: 

• Best Practice
• Financial Impact
• Collaboration

The HIM Team Excellence Award recognizes outstanding effort by a department or team (two or more individuals) in meeting the challenges of the ever changing HIM environment through a new process or technique.  A department or team can be nominated for a project that falls into one or more of the following three general categories.   Nominations can be made here.

1. Best Practice:  defined as processes and activities that have been shown in practice to be the most effective or practical techniques gained from experience that organizations may use to improve internal processes.
2. Financial Impact:  defined as activities that create a positive impact on an institution’s bottom line.
3. Collaboration:  defined as working jointly within or across departments or with external organizations towards a common goal.

HIM Team Excellence Award Winners (formerly HIM Innovation Awards, HIM Collaboration Awards):

2024 HIM Innovation & Collaboration Awards

• Best Practice – Signature Healthcare Health Information Management Team comprised of 62 health information professionals who have shown their resilience and dedication by providing the highest quality care to their patients, being exemplary HIM professionals during the hospital fire crisis.
• Financial Impact –  Tufts Medicine Coding DRG Validators & CDI Second-Level Review Team - focused on the development of more effective quality management measures demonstrating increase in revenue, savings in expenses, staff time or other types of cost reductions.
• Collaboration – Marsha Estabrook Adams and Laurie Vilford of Berkshire Community College efforts dedicating your time, effort and passion into building the program and securing the AHIMA PCAP designation for the Medical Coding/HIM certificate program at Berkshire Community College.
• Collaboration - Mass General Brigham Quality and Safety Team of Keren Flemming, MBA, RHIA, CHPS, Senior Manager Record & Data Integrity, Susan MacLellan and Stacy Gaines who created a strategy to communicate clinically significant radiology results to providers in an effort to improve timely acknowledgement and necessary action

• Collaboration - Community HealthLink Medical Records Team 

2021 HIM Innovation & Collaboration Awards

• Best Practice – Emerson Hospital – Clerical team
• Financial Impact – Mass General Brigham – Coding Team
• Collaboration – South Shore Health HIM Departments, at South Shore Health HIM Departments, at South Shore Medical Center and South Shore Hospital – Colleagues and Management Team

2020 HIM Innovation & Collaboration Awards

• Best Practice – DRG Validation Team from Umass Memorial Healthcare

2019 HIM Innovation & Collaboration Awards

• Best Practice – Partners Healthcare Partners Enterprise Health Information Management (HIM) Release of Information (ROI) and Audit Teams
• Financial Impact – Emerson Hospital Coding Team
• Collaboration – Cooley-Dickinson ED Coding Team

2018 HIM Innovation & Collaboration Awards

• Collaboration – Westborough Behavioral Health -HIM department

2017 HIM Innovation & Collaboration Awards

• Best Practice – Health Information ManagementFederal Bureau of Prison, Federal Medical Center Devens
• Financial Impact – Cooley-Dickinson Hospital CDI Team
• Collaboration – Lawrence General Hospital -CDI, Quality/Risk and DRG Collaboration Team

2016 HIM Innovation & Collaboration Awards

• KIP Coach Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
• Boston Children’s Hospital Coding Team

2015 HIM Innovation & Collaboration Awards

• Best Practice – Massachusetts General Hospital – Privacy Office
• Collaboration – Boston Children’s Hospital – Patient Financial Services/Health Information Management ROI Team
• Collaboration and Best Practice – Medical Record Associates, LLC – MRA EMMI System Implementation Team

2014 HIM Innovation Awards

• Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and its Privacy Team
• Family Health Center of Worcester – “The Scanning Project”
• Whittier Rehabilitation Hospital and KYOS System, Inc.

2013 HIM Innovation Awards

• Lahey Hospital and Medical Center, Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) Program

2012 HIM Innovation Awards

• East Boston Neighborhood Health Center (EBNHC) (Collaboration)
• Morton Hospital (Collaboration)
• Harvard University Health Services (HUHS)
• (Best Practice/Collaboration)
• North Shore Medical Center (NSMC) (Collaboration)
• Emerson Hospital (Best Practice/Collaboration/Financial Impact)

2010-2011 HIM Innovation Awards

• NE Sinai (Collaboration Category)

2009-2010 HIM Innovation Awards

• South Shore Hospital (Financial Impact Category)
• Lawrence General Hospital (Best Practice Category)

2008 HIM Collaboration Awards

• Anna Jacques Hospital Coding Team (winner)
• Mass General Hospital ROI Team (honorable mention)
• Brigham & Women’s Hospital HIS Dept (honorable mention)

2007 HIM Collaboration Awards

• Jordan Hospital HIM Dept
• Lahey Clinic Documentum Team
• Soldiers Home Chelsea HIM Dept

Examples:

• Staff education and professional development including mentoring resulting in a higher quality of work product or improving process efficiencies
• Introduction of creative practice innovations through advances in technology
• Development of more effective quality management measures
• New methods of promoting employee motivation and job satisfaction
• Successful systems improvement, upgrade or process change that resulted in demonstrable increase in revenue, savings in expenses, staff time or other types of cost reductions
• Team effort in implementation of new initiatives or systems: e.g., EHR, physician order entry, web-based transcription, voice recognition, privacy and confidentiality
• Team effort in a department or facility reorganization, merger or relocation

Eligibility:

• At least one member of the team must be a MaHIMA member.
• The award-worthy effort must have occurred and been largely completed within 24 months of the award submission date

Guidelines for submission:

• Describe the challenge being addressed and the goal of the project
• Describe the steps taken, provide illustrative materials as appropriate
• Describe the outcomes. Be as specific as possible as to how the outcome met the challenges and goals of the project
• Provide a complete list of department or team members to be recognized
• Recognition:  Award certificates will be presented at the facility or worksite during AHIMA’s Health Information Professional Week in March.
• Winners will be showcased in MaHIMA Connect and asked to participate as a presenter in a future MaHIMA program