Videl Nelson, Revenue Integrity Consultant

Are Your Coders Working Hard…or Hardly Working?

How productive are your coders? Do you have coders who sometimes forget to “finalize” their coding, resulting in unnecessary “waiting for coding” active encounter holds? It may be impossible to answer this question if you don’t have visibility around the actions and tasks assigned and worked on by your HIM department/personnel. The inability to view and track coder or HIM productivity leads to the overall inefficiency of the billing offices getting claims out the door in a timely manner due to incomplete HIM actions and tasks.

A HIM coder’s job is to assign diagnostic and procedure codes to the patient’s record. HIM coders are responsible for reviewing the patient’s medical record to assign the most appropriate codes based on the documentation and the work that was done. Different types of codes may be used depending on the employer and/or facility. It is up to the HIM coder to report any problems with the medical record or the codes associated with the medical record. HIM personnel work with hospital staff and management regarding the possible issues and reimbursement if there are errors with codes used in medical documentation.

Softek recently released a new control, HIM Productivity, which gives Cerner® clients with Cerner Patient Accounting® full visibility into the productivity of each coder within the HIM department. This control also provides Cerner® clients visibility into their active held encounters due to “waiting for coding” and the associated Task Aging to prioritize work. In addition to viewing the active held encounters, the HIM Productivity control also shows the actions and tasks assigned, being worked, and completed by the HIM personnel. With this enhanced visibility, clients can now see what coding needs to be finalized to continue the billing process and HIM management can better understand the work that their coders are doing. The productivity of HIM coders directly affects how hospitals generate revenue and reimbursement and this control gives clients the tools needed to optimize HIM workflows and maximize revenue for the organization. To learn more about this tool, contact Softek.

What does Softek® do?

Softek’s mission is to help hospital systems maximize their investment in Oracle Cerner Millennium®. We do this by providing innovative software solutions and consulting services that can achieve more together than either can alone.

At Softek, our team of innovators and software developers brings expertise beyond the ordinary to every client. Our experts are involved with Oracle Cerner Millennium® hospitals throughout the country, consulting clients so they can optimize system performance and revenue integrity.

Softek delivers a full suite of consulting services and software solutions to assess and optimize EMR system performance, including revenue cycle integrity and patient accounting.

Softek was awarded 2021 Best in KLAS for Revenue Cycle Optimization.

Let’s talk about how you can get the most out of your Oracle Cerner Millennium® system.