Health Informatics and Information Management Program Celebrates More Than 50 Years

In 1954, a program was established by Baptist Memorial Hospital to help ease a shortage of registered medical record librarians (RRLs) in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. The demand was great for these professionals in hospitals across the region.

That program was the seed of what today is the Health Informatics and Information Management program at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, which celebrates more than 50 yearss this spring during the inaugural UT Health Sciences Weekend in Memphis April 16-18. All six colleges will come together in celebration during that weekend. A special brunch is planned Sunday, April 19, at The Peabody to celebrate the program's anniversary.

Gertrude McCalip ("Miss Mac"), who was serving as director of the Medical Record Department at Baptist Memorial Hospital in the 1950s, was named the first director of the Baptist school. The initial program began as a certificate program because RRLs were not required to have a college degree. A prospective student was required to have at least two years of college or be a registered nurse.

In 1970, as the field progressed, the accreditation standards of the Council of Medical Education of the American Medical Association required that medical record schools be at the baccalaureate level, either incorporated into a four-year program leading to a baccalaureate degree or in a program of post-baccalaureate study.

Baptist then required that entering students must either already have a baccalaureate degree or transfer from affiliating colleges, which allowed students to attend a college for three years, the medical record program for one year, and then receive the baccalaureate degree from the originating college. The affiliated colleges were the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, University of Memphis, Christian Brothers University, Southwest Missouri Baptist College, and Samford University near Birmingham, Alabama.

In July 1973, the newly formed College of Community and Allied Health Professions at what is now UT Health Sciences assumed administrative responsibilities for the program at the request of Baptist Memorial Hospital. At this point, the curriculum assumed a three-plus-one format with students completing three years (90 semester hours) of prerequisite courses at another college or university and the fourth year at UT, which granted the degree.

Mary "Mamel" McCain was hired as department chair to lead this new program. She served as chair until her retirement in 2006, when Rebecca Reynolds, EdD, MHA, was selected as department chair of the program housed in what is now the College of Health Professions. The faculty has remained stable over the years, with Elizabeth "Beth" Bowman serving as a professor for the first 40 years of the program.

Throughout the years, the program has been a leader and a trailblazer in the field, including with its name change in October 1992 to the Department of Health Information Management to reflect the change of the professional association's name the previous year. The departmental name was changed to the Department of Health Informatics and Information Management in 2006.

In 2007, the department began offering the Master of Health Informatics and Information Management (MHIIM) degree. The MHIIM is designed for working health care professionals to advance their knowledge of health informatics and apply health information technology skills in their clinical settings. The UT Health Sciences program was the fourth in the country with a Health Informatics and Information Management Education accredited master's program.

In 2009, an entirely online format and began to admit part-time students. The following year, the program transitioned the BS program to an entry-level master's degree track in the graduate program. More than 650 students completed the undergraduate program from its beginning in 1954 through August 2009, with more than 600 graduates from the master's program since it began.

UT Health Sciences became the first program in the United States to offer the entry-level master's degree. Individuals successfully passing the national registration examination receive the professional designation of RHIA, Registered Health Information Administrator.

The program is fully accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Health Informatics and Information Management Education through 2030.

More news from the College of Health Professions can be found in the Fall issue of Health Professions magazine.