Vantaggi
Grab your Venti or a glass of wine for this one, you’re gonna need it. I started my medical coding career with this job as an Emergency Medicine Coder with TeamHealth, Inc. There’s a number of things I will explain in detail for you about what you can expect from this job. I was in the role for 1 year and 6 months. This is a remote, work from home job. It has a lot of advantages in my opinion, flexible time, just have to make sure you work within their hours and that you’re at 40 by Friday. They are pretty flexible and understanding of your needs and scheduling conflicts. Training period is between 12-16 weeks, but if you need help even after out of training, they provide that one-on-one time with you to coach & counsel if you need it. Very nice option especially if you’re starting out. The Quality Team - the seniors, trainers, and managers are all very nice and understanding of the process it takes to become 95% accurate on all your charts. That is the threshold they help you to achieve by the time you’re done with training. They continue to help you achieve that even if you don’t pass your first couple of audits right out of training. When you need help, reach out to them because they are always willing to help you. I honestly don’t know what I would’ve done without the help of my awesome senior, I wouldn’t have survived without you girl ;-) This is Emergency Medicine, which is coding for ED visits, strictly on the physician/provider side not the hospital/facility. They train you to master the MDM Grid - aka E&M level, and I can say that was the best asset in my coding career that I received from this job. They really hone in on providing specific examples for the Copa, Data, and Risk columns, which I appreciated greatly. It helps you tremendously as a Coder to have that knowledge under your belt. Another trade off is that emergency medicine is a versatile field, you can have patients coming into the ED from anything as small as a sunburn to fractures that need reduction, to the critical patients.
Svantaggi
Now having said all of that, there are a few things to prepare you should you go with Teamhealth for this type of Coding position. Everywhere you go as a Coder you will have a production rate, or a CPH - charts per hour threshold you have to meet everyday. For this position, they set the threshold at 36 CPH. That’s when you’re ready to be launched from training and start coding. So doing a little math here: 8 hour day = 288 charts in a day 7 hour day = 252 10 hour day = 360 Granted of course you are getting a 30 minute lunch break, so subtracting that little bit of time out, you’re still at about 270 charts by the end of your normal 8-hour day. Yes they know you have to take breaks, but they still expect you to reach that everyday in terms of productivity. Friendly reminder you have to be at 40 hours by each Friday, if it's a normal week for you. Once you really master the grid and begin to know the trends of your facilities - aka the type of patients they see and what they do for them etc., yes in a sense it becomes easy to get up to that level of 36 CPH and still maintain your 95% threshold. It takes time just like anything else. However, there are a number of issues to note with this, and where I consider the company’s areas of improvements truly lie. The software that is used is an application called OnBase. Its primary use is for the medical coding workflow to manage and access electronic documents. The platform of which it comes through for us - as the Coder is known as Armor, which utilizes NCCI and MUE edits to pinpoint coding issues. It gives you everything you need in the chart in order to code. You can be rest assured that AI in the healthcare and particularly medical coding field will NEVER take the place of us as Coders, but it is a valuable tool. So the chart is in, it runs its algorithm, and you’re verifying if the level is correct according to what was generated. You make the necessary changes if needed. But a lot of times you’re going to find the information won’t always pull to the tab of which it should go to. Like you’re trying to find the X-Ray that was mentioned, but in your Radiology tab you have nothing. So you are spending time looking at the actual chart (they show you how to access it) digging through, scrolling hoping you find the information you need to code it as quickly as possible. Yes they have a search bar, but still you’re killing time doing it this way. You gotta remember, you’re on a time-crunch - 36 charts per hour. And not only that, but you’re noting on your production sheet which charts you had to do that for, and how much time it took you to do that 1 chart you had to go digging for. So better buy a stopwatch, and keep a tally of it, and have an email open and ready to send the team about the issues you encountered during the day while you were trying to code. Adversely, the normal charts you code where it has all the information you need and you’re not digging for it, you’re putting that tally in the corresponding column on your production sheet as well. They give a benefit if you’re coding more charts that you had to go digging for, they have a special built-in algorithm on your production sheet for this to account for time, but still it doesn’t change the fact that the production rate of 36 CPH remains the same. Therefore the expectation still stands. Production Managers while understandably have to keep up with the magnitude of all the charts that have to be done in the month’s close cycle (usually a 1 month timeframe) of all the coders they oversee, have a tendency to only focus on getting the numbers in, and overlook the obvious glaring issues that are a hindrance to production. Because not only are there IT issues, there’s also the expectation to keep the 36 CPH and not only are you doing the level, but any other billable procedures that are in addition to the level. This includes things like: EKGs, X-Ray Interpretations, Laceration Repairs, Surgical Procedures, Cardiovascular & Cardiac Procedures, Sedation/Anesthesia, Extended Psych Stays, and plenty more miscellaneous procedures. At this point I will tell you that 36 CPH is unrealistic. It’d be one thing if it was just the level you’re coding for. It’d be another thing if you didn’t have IT issues with the charts. It’d be another thing on top of that if you didn’t have additional procedures, but then again you can’t expect that in ED / Emergency Medicine coding. You’re also needing to be aware of state insurance guidelines and split share rules between physicians and APCs which they provide that information of course to you. When you’re racing to get through your charts, because you don’t want that email from your production manager, what does that lead to? A decline in your accuracy. You’re more prone to make mistakes when you’re racing through charts because you feel that urgency to make your goal. In turn how that affects your audit is open to interpretation because everyone is different, and yes they do work with you to get you back to where you need to be. It’s a tightrope you walk when trying to balance both accuracy and productivity at that level simultaneously. What’s more, because TeamHealth clinicians operate in the majority of the states, there is the expectation to jump on other Coder’s sites when that Coder is out for whatever reason. So assist and jump on where you can to help out if your production manager says so, but just know that favor may not be returned to you if and when you’re out. PTO and UPTO work separately, yet interchangeably. PTO as you can surmise is the paid time off you start to accrue based on the hours you work in a week. You will have this number provided to you at the bottom of your paystubs. UPTO is known as Unscheduled PTO which is when you need to utilize that ‘flex time’ in your day to accommodate for something that was unplanned or unscheduled, but you’re still needing to make that 40 hours by Friday or the weekend if you need Saturday or Sunday to make up for it. It’s weird how they set up the accrual for UPTO, and they don’t really give you the details on it either. It’s based on what your manager will say you have in the bank. They choose to keep that information from you.