Job Details

Hospital Outpatient Or Professional Coding Educator

The Hospital Outpatient or Professional Coding Educator is responsible for coordinating and conducting coding training, and developing training content and materials for the Franciscan Alliance Corporate Coding Department, hospital outpatient and professional coding staff. This position ensures training practices are standardized and result in consistent coding outcomes, as well as provides input regarding the content of policies and procedures. This position ensures all new and existing staff members are trained, and adhere to current coding policies and procedures. The Corporate Coding leadership team relies upon this position to be an authority and expert in interpreting and applying coding guidelines, to achieve consistency in coding practices.

With 12 ministries and access points across Indiana and Illinois, Franciscan Health is one of the largest Catholic health care systems in the Midwest. Franciscan Health takes pride in hiring coworkers that provide compassionate, comprehensive care for our patients and the communities we serve.

What You Can Expect:

• Develops and maintains all corporate outpatient coding education, training policies and procedures, and coding reference materials.
• Leads training sessions and assess coder comprehension of covered materials.
• Makes recommendations for the development of coding resources and policy and procedure development.
• Assists corporate coding leadership with training and/or development of a performance improvement track for coding coworkers in the corrective action process related to quality or productivity performance.
• Coordinates with Coding Auditors to prepare education material based on audit results.
• Develops and maintains a consistent coding operations orientation program, and reports the coders' progress to coding leadership throughout the orientation and training processes.
• Assists Coding Manager and Supervisor with review and response to external coding audits.
• Acts as a nosologist, analyzing and interpreting disease, procedure classifications, and terminologies for the accurate translation of healthcare data.
• Applies broad guidelines to specific coding situations, independently utilizing discretion and a significant level of analytic ability.
• Ability to analyze information, make decisions and exercise independent judgement.
• Serves as the subject matter expert with regards to diagnosis and procedure codes, coding guidelines, medical terminology, anatomy/physiology, reimbursement schemes, payer specific guidelines, public reporting of outcomes, quality of patient care outcome measures, and the interpretation of coded data as it relates to revenue cycle compliance.
• Remains current with coding and industry changes through participation in educational opportunities to maintain credentials.
• Participates in problem identification, performs root cause analysis and recommends a solution to Coding Management.
• Maintains expert knowledge of Franciscan Alliance coding software tools.
• Assists with development and maintenance of software system workflow for standardization and maximum efficiency.
• Oversees system testing with regards to any published software updates or software functionality changes.
• Identifies template variation within the EMR that has a negative impact on coding edits/errors.
• Escalates trends and makes recommendations for template revisions/standardization to FAIS HIM team and Coding Leadership.
• Coordinates all testing efforts with coding superusers and FAIS teams.
• Assists with annual verification of coding staff credentials.
• Orients new physicians with regards to the coding department's role in the revenue cycle, and prepare training material for coding related to physician education.
• Assists with identification and implementation of process improvements according to industry best practice standards to make the best use of resources, decrease costs and improve coding services across the specialized service lines.
• Abides by the Standards of Ethical Coding as set forth by the American Health Information Management Association/American Association of Procedural Coders and adheres to official coding guidelines.

Qualifications:

• Required High School Diploma/GED With 5 years of Franciscan coding experience
• Required Associate's Degree Health Information Management
• Preferred Bachelor's Degree Health Information Management
• 5 years Franciscan outpatient coding with CCS, CCS-P, CPC Required
• 5 years Outpatient coding experience with RHIT/RHIA Required
• 3 years Coding Manager or Trainer/Auditor Preferred
• Certified Coding Specialist (CCS) - American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA)
• Certified Coding Specialist - Physician (CCS-P) - American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA)
• Certified Professional Coder (CPC) - American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC)
• Registered Health Information Technician (RHIT) - American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA)
• Registered Health Information Administrator (RHIA) - American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA)

Travel is required.

Job Range: Incentive:

Equal Opportunity Employer

It is the policy of Franciscan Alliance to provide equal employment to its employees and qualified applicants for employment as otherwise required by an applicable local, state or Federal law.

Franciscan Alliance reserves a Right of Conscience objection in the event local, state or Federal ordinances that violate its values and the free exercise of its religious rights.

Franciscan Alliance is committed to equal employment opportunity.