DEVELOPING HMIC: THE HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT INFORMATION CONSORTIUM
| Published date | 01 March 1993 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01435129310027237 |
| Pages | 22-27 |
| Date | 01 March 1993 |
| Author | Margaret P.J. Haines |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
LIBRARY MANAGEMENT
Developing HMIC
THE HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT INFORMATION CONSORTIUM
Margaret
P.J.
Haines
INTRODUCTION
King Edward's Hospital Fund for London
(the King's Fund) is an independent health
care charity whose mission is to facilitate
better health service delivery to Londoners.
It does this through grant giving and through
the work of its three divisions: the College,
which offers management training and
consultancy to National Health Service
(NHS) managers; the Institute, which
conducts independent assessments of UK
health care policy including comparative
analyses with other health systems; and the
Centre for Health Services Development
which promotes good practice in service
delivery and actively encourages the
dissemination of good new ideas. Although
mainly self-funded, the Centre receives some
grant funding from the Department of
Health.
Information Resources is part of the
Centre and includes a fully computerized
public reference library and speciality
information services. Our mandate is to serve
the information needs of King's Fund
staff;
to act as a national resource providing wide-
ranging information services on developments
in health and social care; and to facilitate
improvements in information management in
the NHS through the development of
information networks and strategies and
through the promotion of good information
practice.
Information Resources has a 25 year
history of dedicated library service to a wide
range of clients on all non-clinical aspects of
health care delivery. It still provides the only
free public access library in this area in the
United Kingdom. There are other similar
library collections at the Nuffield Institute
for Health Services Studies (Leeds
University), the Department of Health, and
several regional health authorities, but these
libraries either charge for searches of their
collections or are open only to employees of
their organizations.
In the past three years, user demands for
information services from the King's Fund
Centre have climbed dramatically. This is due
to a number of environmental factors
including the major NHS reforms, changes in
nursing education, and expanded interest in
European Community health policy
development. All of these changes came at a
time when NHS library services were still
providing primarily clinical materials and had
little funding or expertise to handle
management enquiries. Because of charging
and restricted access policies of some of the
larger health care management libraries, my
department was receiving too many requests
to handle effectively.
In 1991, the department was at a
crossroads — whether to expand in order to
be able to accommodate this increased
demand or to develop a role other than
direct information provider for these clients.
I had already embarked on a three-year
plan to improve our service delivery by a
major reorganization of the department to
include three national information exchanges
which were formerly part of other Centre
teams and a major project to automate fully
all key library services on two sites in the
Fund leading to the creation of a shared
Library Management, Vol. 14 No. 3, 1993, pp. 22-27,
© MCB University Press, 0143-5124
22
To continue reading
Request your trial