Clinical Coder Educator Auditor

Clinical Coder Educator and Auditor 

Employment Type: Full Time, Permanent
Classification: Clinical Coder Level 2 (PN 25179)
Salary:  $130,507 (Plus 11.5% Super)
Location: The Canberra Hospital
Section: Health Information Services
Closing Date: 09 October 2023 

About the Role:
The CFO Division is responsible for developing and maintaining budgets, providing strategic financial advice, procurement and supply, and operational reporting across the health service. Additionally, the CFO Division includes the Health Information Services (HIS) team, which provides a range of services including:

• Provision of health records and personal health information for patient care, research, quality improvement, education, and medicolegal purposes.
• Clinical record scanning and management.
• Clinical coding and case mix data generation.
• Clinical documentation improvement (CDI) program.
• Patient identifier management.

Clinical coding is an essential function for Canberra Health Services to facilitate accurate funding reimbursement, to support clinical research and education, to assist in the planning and evaluation of health care services, and to fulfil local and mandatory national data submission requirements.

This role is a combined coding/auditing/educator role. In addition to some routine clinical coding responsibilities, you will also be required to train new coders and assess ongoing coder education needs through regular coding audits. You will play a key role in determining appropriate Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) allocation, optimising coding throughput, ensuring targets and key performance indicators are met, conducting coding quality audits involving interactive case mix reviews with clinical staff as well as providing training, mentoring and support to the clinical coding team.

Duties:
Under limited direction of the Clinical Coding Manager, you will perform clinical coding, coding audits and coder education. You will:

1. Perform tertiary level clinical coding for all CHS and University of Canberra Hospital inpatient episodes.
2. Perform comprehensive clinical coding audits to ensure coding accuracy and optimal DRG allocation and manage a continuous quality improvement strategy, including providing recommendations and feedback as appropriate.
3. Provide training, education, mentoring, support, and development to Clinical Coding staff.
4. Liaise with Clinical Documentation Specialists and Clinical staff as appropriate to improve clinical record documentation to optimise coding accuracy and DRG allocation, whilst adhering to case mix submission deadlines and in-house reporting timeframes.
5. Maintain coding skills through attendance at educational sessions, research and study of current coding and health literature and contact with Clinicians.
6. Assist with planning, testing and implementation of changes to coding and grouping systems.
7. Undertake other duties appropriate to this level of classification which contribute to the operation of the organisation.

About you:
Mandatory Requirements/Qualifications:

1. Degree in Health Information Management, or eligibility for admission to full membership of the Health Information Management Association of Australia.
2. CHS is leading the drive to digitally transform health service delivery in Australia through the implementation of a territory wide Digital Health Record. Computer literacy skills are required which are relevant to this role as you will be responsible for completing required documentation and becoming a proficient user of the Digital Health Record and/or other Information Technology systems; once proficient, you will need to remain current with changes, updates and contingencies.

Desirable:

1. A minimum of three years clinical coding experience using the current edition of ICD-10-AM, covering a broad range of case mix in an acute tertiary hospital, with ability to accurately code an average of 4 – 5 records per hour.
2. Have an understanding of how the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) indicators and the commitment to the Baby Friendly Health Initiative align with this role.
3. You will need to fulfil the responsibilities of this role as detailed in the CHS Exceptional Care Framework, Clinical Governance Framework, Partnering with Consumers Framework and other related frameworks.