1/27/2020
Hiring a coder: How to recruit and retain the right candidate
PART 1: SUMMARY.
According to Kimberly Clark, the main cause of o lost revenue in medical practice is inaccurate coding which shows just how significant it is to have a professional coder on the staff. Because of the demand available for skilled coders, it is a challenge to find and recruit the right candidate due to the competition available for the employers. Ms. Clark therefore suggests training an internal employee within the organization or company who the company preferentially wants to retain to have those coding skills instead of hiring an outsider. However, if this option is not available, Ms. Clark suggests 5 tips to help recruit a coder: determine your coding needs, describe your ideal candidate, create a compelling job advertisement, recruiting from the right place and asking the right questions. These tips are meant to establish the roles and responsibilities of the coder, their qualifications, where to find them as well as the right questions to ask so as to identify if you are hiring the right person for the job. She particularly emphasizes on the need to focus on the skills that the person has and not just hiring anybody to fill up the position.
PART 2: PROBLEM.
I have previously worked at the North-western memorial hospital in the position of a nurse on internship. During my internship, I noticed several documentation issues that arose at the hospital. There was only one coder who was often overwhelmed by the magnitude of the work from the patients. Some documentations went missing from the patient files or were simply not documented due to poor follow up. In some cases, the information provided to the coders was not enough leading to the problem of not coding to the highest level. The coder sometime reported less expensive or more expensive medical services than was actually performed hence leading to the problem of under coding or over coding due to lack of system audits.
PART 3: HR INITIATIVE.
The HR team needs to take initiatives to change their perception of the importance of a coder in the health care sector. As Ms. Clark puts it in her article, it is very important to have a professional coder as part of the medical staff. They therefore need to hire more professional coders to be part of the medical staff. Hiring coders from outside would help to manage the huge volume of information that needs to be coded at the healthcare facility and enable a smooth flow of work. A better solution that the HR team can come up with is training part of their staff in coding so that they avoid the high costs of hiring a coder from outside. The HR team may still hire a professional coder from outside but they need to change their hiring criteria so as to hire the right person by following the five tips given by Ms. Clark in her article. The HR team needs to focus not just on the skills but also the ethics of the coders such that they are able to record the true values of the medical services in order to eliminate the problem of under coding and over coding. The HR team might also introduce human resource assessment and audit plans so as to get reduce the instances of infidelity or doing substandard work than is required. This would prevent the providers from giving incomplete or less information to the coders hence eliminating the problem of failing to code to the highest level. Automating the process and using up to date protocols would also help to fast track the speed of the work hence reducing piling of information that needs to be coded.
PART 4: IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGE.
The implementation challenge that is likely to emerge include ethical challenges. If the hired person has no ethics, they may increase the problem of under coding or over coding as well as not coding to the highest level. Furthermore, if part of the employees is trained to code, they may have a conflict of interest between their initial work and coding. Apart from the training interfering with their initial work, trainees may also opt for another job in the more lucrative coding field.
PART 5: EVALUATION.
To evaluate the impact of the HR initiative, the organization may use statistical tallying of the number of recorded cases of over coding, under coding or failing to code to the highest level. Self-appraisal of the employees including the coders and the providers of information can also help to ensure accuracy in coding.
References
Heywood, N. A., Gill, M. D., Charlwood, N., Brindle, R., Kirwan, C. C., Allen, N., ... &Forrest, L. (2016). Improving accuracy of clinical coding in surgery.
Sehjal, R., & Harries, V. (2016). Awareness of clinical coding.