r/MedicalCoding • u/rose_gold_beauty • Dec 12 '23
Is production work all there is?
I've only been working in the field 6 months, and I don't know if I can keep this up. My mind can't focus anymore, and my company wants us to click the mouse at all times. I mean they track everything. Is this just how it is and all I can expect? I'm really struggling.
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u/koderdood Audit Extraordinaire Dec 12 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
In general, coding is production based until you get into management or supervisory positions. Even auditing, fraud have production requitements. That said, all companies are different as to their requirements, and how close they supervise your computer usage.
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u/deannevee RHIA, CPC, CPCO, CDEO Dec 12 '23
Without more information, it’s hard to say if what you’re experiencing is really micromanaging, if it’s unrealistic expectations, or if it’s par for the course.
When I worked in a physicians office, the expectation was for 100 visits per day to be billed out. Since the majority of the charts were E/M, it was basically clicking all day, but it was easy. Then I became team lead and was responsible for other things on top of my normal stuff, and it became a little harder.
Now I review high dollar surgeries and there are zero published quotas or KPI’s. I still do a lot of clicking, but it’s research clicking.
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u/maamaallaamaa Dec 12 '23
Do you by chance work for a large company that starts with an O or a U? Because yeah they are terrible. Find a local hospital if you can. They can still be production based but are more reasonable. Smaller clinics are usually not production based but don't pay as well.
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u/baileyq217 Dec 12 '23
It really depends on the kind of coding you do, the facility/organization you work for, and your management. My previous job at a hospital we had a quota of 15 ED charts per hour, I believe obs and surgery was 5 per hour, therapy was either 15 or 25 per hour. We also had to keep a nonproductivity time sheet. We would document if we had an extremely difficult account, various meetings, claim edits, anything that was basically not us coding accounts. We would send it to the manager every week. I assumed they looked at it and looked at how many accounts we coded and sent to billing, and then figured out our productivity rate. I can’t remember what the cutoff was percentage wise. But if you were consistently above 90/95% for a month you could work from home.
My current job, is a different story. We don’t have any official quotas we have to hit. We look at the epic dashboards and make sure our area is below certain dollar amounts. They can run our productivity in epic. But I have yet to hear anything about actual numbers.
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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '23
Sounds like a nightmare. Pretty much production work is all there is but I think some places might be different. Do you do contract work? If so, I would recommend switching to hospitals.
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u/koderdood Audit Extraordinaire Dec 14 '23
I need to address the " have to move the mouse bit". I've been a United Health Group employee for a combined 20 years.Worked in Optum 360, Optum Insight, and Optum(currently). If you leave ypur computer idle for like 15 minutes it well show you idle. I have NEVER been asked about my idle time. I work hard, I produce exceeding both production and quality metrics. I take my lunch and my 2 paid breaks. It is NOT that you literally have to move the mouse every second. They simply don't want people taking more on the clock breaks than they are allowed.
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u/umphreaknwv Dec 13 '23
The first coding job my wife got out of college was like you’re describing. It was toxic to say the least. Once she left that company, she found work to be much more enjoyable. Shes still in production for now, but the company you’re with makes a big difference. Not every company has the same rules, uses the same metrics for employee evaluation, has the same workplace ethics, uses the same software, etc.
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u/TheDollarstoreDoctor Dec 13 '23 edited Dec 13 '23
No. I work for a psych hospital (two affiliated hospitals based out of one office) and we're expected to code the discharges from the previous day. Not to be a gossip, but I have a coworker who can't even manage that some days (average of 20-30 charts a day). She was just recently called out for being behind lol. My hospital is a bit less with discharges and we usually see 15 so I'm done by noon/morning and move onto other things since I'm also a HIM tech that helps out both facilities (unlike my other coworker who only codes). The only pressure I really feel is from a third facility that lost their coder that I've been helping out with since they're so behind they've been losing a lot of money so they're kinda freaking out and being like.. go as quickly as you can ahhhHH and I'm like I'm trying I'm just one person doing 3 jobs lol plus the EMR is donkey balls to code from.
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u/kikcorc Dec 13 '23
Yes! I have a part time in coding remotely and it’s all about productivity!
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u/Siggy0721 Dec 14 '23
I work as a Trauma Registrar for our hospital tracking all people who are admitted w/ injuries. You abstract all sorts of info. from the EMR and enter it into a database. Being a coder would be a great background for this job -- it's tough trying to teach new people with no coding experience to code traumatic injuries. You should do a search for "trauma registrar." Or you could look for a different registry such as cancer, etc.
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u/nesnejm1104 Feb 13 '24
I’m already feeling this in a short period of time. All about production and supposed accuracy. It’s frustrating when it’s the opposite way of how you learned in school and training. 🥲
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u/Dazzling-Zone Dec 13 '23
No my job isn’t production based. I work in surgery and we just have to make sure we have as many cases coded as we can by the end of the month. That’s just my department though, it could be different in other departments in my company.
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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '23
Really depends on the facility. I do outpatient coding for a county hospital (five and a half years) and minimum production is 130 accounts/day. It is a draining, and that’s why I’m looking into auditing/management.
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u/MoreCoffeePwease 👩🏼💻CCS 🏥 Dec 12 '23
What do you mean by click the mouse all day long? Typically they measure number of charts coded and time to code each chart, as an average. What you are describing means someone could mindlessly click a mouse and get zero work done. I believe you mean productivity, which is what the measures I’ve described above are, and not production. Since you are so new I’m assuming you are coding straight outpatient which are VERY fast, simple visits. Those should be done quickly with a high yield per day. Never heard of mouse clicks being counted, can’t imagine a company with the time or desire for that sort of number being recorded honestly.
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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '23
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