flynn043

A few months ago I held a forum for wanna-be coders and much of my presentation was devoted to hospital versus physician coding. By the time I was done, I had several people asking me how to choose between the two. This is an excellent question and one that you need to decide right off because how you proceed with joining organizations and networking will be impacted. First off, not everyone has the skill it takes to be a coder. I have, unfortunately, met and attempted to train a lot of people who just “don’t get it.” Coding requires a great deal of attention to detail that can be tedious to a lot of people. It’s also detective work – once you have all the details, then you need to be able to assemble them and make sense of them. And because these details come from medical record documentation, coders must understand medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, and disease process. What Makes a Good Coder? The first question to ask yourself is, do I meet the follo...

I’ve been meaning to start a blog for novice coders and wanna-be coders for quite some time, but that initial blog topic has been elusive – at least until this week when I received the sad news that Deane Poore, RHIT, one of my coding mentors, recently passed away. And as I congregated with former coworkers to pay respects to our esteemed colleague, I found myself reminiscing about my career beginnings and all the people who had a hand in my development as a coding professional. There was my mother, Nancy Stanton, RHIT, who encouraged me to get an associate’s degree in health information management (HIM); there was Lila Mayer, RHIA, who gave me a chance as an outpatient coder after graduation even though I had no experience except for the limited coding I did under her supervision as an intern; Layne Poseley, RHIA, who checked all of my work for the first year of my employment and answered countless “why’s” and “how’s”; and there was Deane, a former teacher turned coder, whom Lila ...