“Why haven’t you done it”, says Claire Holt to her peers who haven’t become CHIAs. As the first CHIA to recertify, Claire said “by participating in the industry and the profession, it’s really easy to recertify and obtain the 60 points”.
As the Director of Health Informatics at Portland District Health, Claire’s main driver for becoming a CHIA was because it “gave you a framework and credibility of what you do. Working regionally there needed to be credibility across the group to make decisions with validation.” By being certified, Claire said she can now say “I am certified, I know what I am talking about”.
As a trained Health Information Manager with a strong background in IT, Claire naturally gravitated towards IT. A typical day for Claire can involve attending meetings, working on system improvements, user trouble shooting and consulting medical staff on best practice to name a few.
Even though Claire became a CHIA in 2014, Claire says she still sees the return on investment. “To this day, I am still pulling out the information when doing new developments.” “We are moving into data analytics and using regional data to do things. I was able to negotiate the sharing of data and using my CHIA credential I was able to say I know the parameters of what we need to do; this held a lot of credence for the decisions made.”
Claire sees the future of health informatics as “getting to the point its not noted in clinical care. The clinicians work and it’s just happening in the background; its unobtrusive”.