What is the primary goal of data governance in health information management?

• A. To minimize data volume regardless of accuracy.
• B. To centralize blame when data quality issues occur.
• C. To ensure consistent policy implementation and data integrity.
• D. To allow unrestricted access to all data for all staff.

Answer: (C)

Data governance in health information management is the framework of rules, roles, and processes that keep data accurate, consistent, secure, and usable across the organization. Its goal is to implement policies uniformly and maintain data integrity so information from different systems can be trusted for patient care, analytics, compliance, and reporting. This means standardizing data definitions, quality checks, and access controls, ensuring data flows and remains reliable no matter where it’s stored. Choices that focus on shrinking data volume without regard to accuracy, assigning blame rather than improving processes, or granting unrestricted access ignore these essential governance aims and the privacy and security principles that govern health data.