D256 Task 1 Leadership and HR Analysis Example

Forty-Two People, Three Former Departments, One Director: Applying Servant Leadership and Four Human Resource Functions to a Consolidated, Mostly Remote HIM Department

Student Name

Leavitt School of Health, Western Governors University

D256: Principles of Management in Health Information Management, Task 1

Course Instructor

Month Day, Year

Forty-Two People, Three Former Departments, One Director: Applying Servant Leadership and Four Human Resource Functions to a Consolidated, Mostly Remote HIM Department

The Department and Its Goals

Northfield Health, a composite health system, owns three hospitals that until this year each ran its own health information management (HIM) department. After moving all three hospitals onto one electronic health record, the system is consolidating HIM into a single department under one director. The new department has 42 staff: 18 coders, 10 record completion analysts, 8 release of information specialists and 6 clinical documentation specialists. About 70% will work from home, and most will report to a team lead from a hospital other than their own.

The consolidation is meant to achieve four department goals within 12 months: raise coding accuracy on quarterly audits to at least 95% at every site (current results range from 89% to 94%), bring delinquent health records below 20% of average monthly discharges, complete release of information requests within five business days, and cut annual staff turnover from 21% to below 12%. The last goal matters because the others depend on keeping experienced staff through a disruptive change.

Servant Leadership

Servant leadership places the growth and well-being of followers at the center of the leader's work. In a systematic review of the servant leadership literature, Eva et al. (2019) described it as an other-oriented approach to leading, expressed through one-on-one attention to each follower's individual needs and interests, and through a turning of the leader's attention away from personal interest and toward colleagues and the community the organization serves. The leader serves first, by listening, removing obstacles and developing people, and expects that performance will follow.

Applying the Theory to the Department's Goals

Coding accuracy. Accuracy rates differ between the three former departments partly because each followed its own internal coding policies. A servant leader would not respond with stricter audits alone. The director would meet with coders from each site to learn where the policies conflict, adopt one set of written coding guidelines built from their input, and give each coder an individual education plan based on their own audit findings. Audits then become coaching rather than punishment, which encourages coders to ask questions instead of hiding uncertainty.

Record completion. Delinquent records depend on physicians as much as on HIM staff. The director would serve the analysts by removing the obstacles they report, such as deficiency lists that physicians find confusing, and by carrying their concerns to medical staff leaders so analysts are not left to chase physicians alone.

Release of information turnaround. Specialists from the three sites use different request logs and templates. Listening to them first would reveal which tools actually slow the work, and the director would secure one request tracking tool and standard letters before holding the team to the five-day target.

Staff retention. This goal is where servant leadership fits best. Staff are losing local teams and familiar managers at once, and remote work can leave people isolated. The director would hold one-on-one meetings with every employee in the first 60 days, ask what each needs to succeed at home, and create a visible career path. Graduates of health information technology programs report strong upward mobility into supervisory, revenue cycle and data analytics roles, and remote or hybrid work remains common in the field (Hamada et al., 2026), so a department that offers growth and flexibility is competing well for the staff it wants to keep.

Why Servant Leadership Rather Than Transactional Leadership

Transactional leadership, which exchanges rewards for meeting set standards, is a natural choice in a department measured by productivity and accuracy numbers, and it will have a place in the department's performance standards. It fits this situation less well as the main approach, however. In a systematic review of leadership styles and nurses' job satisfaction, transformational leadership had the most positive associations, followed by authentic, resonant and servant styles, while transactional leadership showed both positive and negative associations (Specchia et al., 2021). Although that evidence comes from nursing, the same people-centered pressures apply to HIM staff going through consolidation. The department's greatest risk is losing experienced people during the change, and a leadership style centered on their needs addresses that risk directly. Transformational leadership, with its shared vision, would also be reasonable; servant leadership is preferred here because the first year calls for listening to three groups with different habits more than for inspiring them toward a new vision.

Human Resource Functions the Change Requires

Job analysis and design. The three departments used different job titles, descriptions and productivity expectations for the same work. The director and human resources must analyze each role, write one description for each job, set consistent productivity and quality standards and define which roles are eligible for remote work, including requirements for a private workspace and secure connection.

Recruitment and selection. Two coding positions and one documentation specialist position are vacant. Recruiting nationally for remote roles widens the candidate pool, but selection must test skills directly with a coding assessment, verify credentials such as the Registered Health Information Technician or Certified Coding Specialist, and assess whether candidates can work independently.

Training and development. All coders must be trained on the single set of coding guidelines, release of information specialists on the new tracking tool, and team leads on supervising remote staff. A development program would pay for one credential exam per employee each year and create a coder career ladder with three levels, linking the training function directly to the retention goal.

Performance appraisal and compensation. Remote work requires appraisals based on measurable output and quality rather than visible effort. Each employee will have quarterly reviews against the same productivity and accuracy standards, with a one-on-one conversation rather than a form alone. Human resources must also address pay: staff at one hospital earned about 8% less for the same work, and paying colleagues on the same team differently would undermine both trust and retention. Harmonizing pay bands in the first year is part of the plan.

Conclusion

Consolidating three HIM departments into one mostly remote team puts accuracy, turnaround and retention at risk at the same time. Servant leadership gives the director a way to earn the trust of staff who did not choose the change, and four human resource functions, from job design to pay equity, turn that trust into a department able to meet its goals.

References

Eva, N., Robin, M., Sendjaya, S., van Dierendonck, D., & Liden, R. C. (2019). Servant leadership: A systematic review and call for future research. The Leadership Quarterly, 30(1), 111-132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2018.07.004

Hamada, D., Lalani, K., Brodnik, M., Fenton, S. H., Kennedy, A., Marc, D. T., Payne, V. L., & Reynolds, R. (2026). Workforce review of health information technology associate-degree graduates: 2017-2024. Advances in Health Information Science and Practice, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.63116/AH.000000002

Specchia, M. L., Cozzolino, M. R., Carini, E., Di Pilla, A., Galletti, C., Ricciardi, W., & Damiani, G. (2021). Leadership styles and nurses' job satisfaction: Results of a systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(4), 1552. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18041552