Electronic Health Records: An Audit and Internal Control Guide

CHAPTER 7

Analytic Tools and Audit Checklists

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

—HENRI BERGSON (1859–1941), FRENCH PHILOSOPHER

The role of the e-health auditor is to examine business processes and test the use of appropriate internal controls to ensure the integrity of e-health infrastructures. Auditors use analytics to break down information into data elements and extract basic principles to understand the interrelationships among those data elements and their impact on a specific task or subject. An effective e-health audit often requires analysis of programming components to develop algorithms and comprehend the manipulations and modifications of data that the algorithms process. Analytic tools are simply the technologies that drive the software and techniques that house the algorithms used to review a specific function or task. Auditors also typically use checklists to collect and analyze data. Examples of auditor checklists appear throughout this book.

Thus far, this book has covered industry applications of e-health data, including niche concepts such as clinical and financial case management. It has also covered the various types of algorithms that can be developed to manipulate or process data. The previous chapter focused on understanding the mechanics behind data-driven health decisions and the models for ...