Question

You are the new coding manager at a 500 bed teaching academic hospital. Upon your start, you come to realize that the coding unit is a disaster. There is currently no coding quality program in place and there are no documented standards for either quality of productivity. There is a relatively high denial rate as a result of these issues. You must work to resolve these coding deficiencies. Since you were promoted from within, you already have awareness to these issues, and are also aware the coding unit is already in trouble with the Quality Improvement Organization. You fear that the OIG could show up at any time to review and research the coding operations. Many of the financial issues the facility is enduring is a result of these poor coding practices.

In a 3-4 paragraph response, address the following:

1. What are going to do to resolve the coding problems and decrease the denial rate?

2. What standards for quality and coding do you recommend?

3. What standards for productivity will you recommend?

4. How will your initiatives impact the coding unit?

Answer 1

A coding manager is professional responsible for supervising the medical coding staff that deals with patient records . Medical coding is one of the essential components of the health care modern facility.

1. After joining as a medical coding manager , first of all has a meeting with the staffs to come to know why the staffs deny to use the coding system and take the suggestions . Being a Democratic leader is very essential for the easy run of any facility. After holding the meeting you will be aware of the reasons that why the coding system is not being used that efficiently for example the software are difficult to run , the modules take more time to shift from one page to another , not simple to use , does not have storage facility , access is difficult etc.

Then being the manager enlist the issues in front of the administration and provide the solution of how we can resolve it . Apply for any additional funds or technical staffs required for sorting the issues or to make it more user friendly ,for the proper run of coding system in the hospital. By this way you can improve the existing system and also decrease the denial rate .

2. The chief standards for quality and coding system recommended by me are:-

- security

- reliability

- efficient

- maintainability

Whatever software we are using should be easy to maintain , should provide secure connection , consistency in the performance and should be efficient enough to function properly .

3. Standards for productivity recommended by me are :-

- less time utility

- accuracy

Software should take less time to inculcate the data and provide feedback and must provide accurate information.

4. The initiatives should be based on the team work and their suggestions . By inculcating the issues or problems faced by staffs ,and the suggestions taken by them helped me to come to the solution of this big problem because coding system is one of the essential and wide part of healthcare system . By using the standards or following the above mentioned standards and opinions suggested by staff the technical team made a new software or coding system which is fast ,cheap , reliable.,has enough storage , simple to use , individual log in IDs etc features will make the staffs happy and will cooperate with the coding team to use to it for hospital use and hence, will help in the technology advancement of the hospital .