News

A lasting impact

April 18-22 is Health Information Management Week this year.

By Alyssa Evans, Marketing & Communications Specialist

Throughout CMH, it’s common to see pairs of coworkers who have worked together over the years. In the Health Information Management department, Debbie and Jodi make up one of the longest-standing coworker relationships in the hospital.

Debbie and Jodi have been coworkers at CMH for about 30 years. Jodi began working at CMH in January 1979.

Debbie joined the CMH staff in 1992. Before officially joining CMH, Debbie worked at the Astoria Clinic for about 16 years. The clinic was managed by CMH for about five years, starting in the late ‘80s.

Throughout Debbie and Jodi’s careers, their jobs have gradually changed along with technology upgrades. When Jodi first started working in Health Information Management, CMH didn’t have computers yet. Instead, patient records were recorded either by hand or typewriter on index cards, followed by microfiche.

CMH got its first computers around 1984, Jodi says. At this time, Jodi began analyzing records to make sure they were accurate before they went to coding.

As CMH’s technology continued to grow, its number of patients did too. Debbie and Jodi have helped work on filing patient records at CMH. They’ve seen CMH’s patient records grow from a single file room to an online filing system.

“It has changed a lot. It used to be just a file room but it kept getting bigger and bigger,” Jodi says. “I can still remember the first medical record down there and the patient’s name.”

Debbie and Jodi have worked on other important tasks in Health Information Management such as filing, scanning and purging records.

During their careers at CMH, Debbie and Jodi have grown too. They have both raised children and welcomed grandchildren: Jodi is a mother of two kids and grandmother of two kids, and Debbie has one son and three grandchildren. They’ve also grown as individuals too.

“One change I’ve seen in myself is that when I was younger I was painfully shy. In the clinic, I don’t know what changed, but some of that shyness has gone away,” Debbie says. “Part of that is you’re around people so long. It’s helped me not be as shy, seeing so many people like acquaintances, dealing with doctors or nurses.”

The pair have also worked as mentors in the hospital, training coworkers who’ve come to work at CMH. Debbie also helped train employees through Astoria’s Tongue Point Job Corps Center. In all, they’ve made a lasting impact throughout their careers, from analyzing files to finding the right spot to store them in the warehouse.