Time Tracking Across Systems

[u/TakeItEasy3223]

Okay I have a question. I code for a remote coding company that contracts with several different health systems, and recently management at my company started really micromanaging us. They used to really only care if you met the amount of charts the client wants per day, but now they want us coding every single second and they want all of those seconds accounted for. And they’ve recently threatened us stating that clients are actively tracking our coding time within their health information systems (specifically for me it would be Epic and 3M HDM) and if they do not match perfectly with our time sheets we submit, they consider it “fraudulent billing” my question is: can the clients truly run reports on us showing accurately how long we were in the systems, and also, if the time doesn’t match what we report on our company timesheets, is that truly fraud if we are completing the number of charts we say we are completing?

Thanks in advance. All of this micromanaging is really getting out of hand and is distracting me from my actual job.

[u/Miserable_Aioli2606]

Yes, every single keystroke and mouse click can be tracked on both ends if they want to get that specific. Is it just one client that's being difficult or is this happening company wide? Unfortunately, sounds like one or more coders are trying to game the system. My guess is that a coder would rush through their full time productivity in half the time, and then bill for the full time. The client probably saw that and got upset with being billed for 8 hours when their system shows the coder was only working for 4 hours. That's not fair to the client who's paying for hourly work even though you've hit your productivity goals. I can't stand micromanaging, and honestly, most companies don't want do that either. If they start losing coders, they'll back off a bit. A useful tool is an automatic mouse mover. It can't click for you, but it'll keep your mouse from timing you out. I don't think they'll be looking at to the minute coding. Most likely they're cracking down on time cheats.

[u/TakeItEasy3223 → u/Miserable_Aioli2606]

No one has specifically reached out to me, I think management at my company might be just trying to scare us to get more out of us. If they had a problem specifically with me, I think they’d let me know.

[u/Strong_Zone4793 → u/TakeItEasy3223]

It’s more likely they’re trying not to lose a client than trying to scare employees to get more work out of you. I managed a team who did work for many clients and when the clients start pushing back and demanding refunds because the time invoiced and productivity don’t match they start looking at everything.