It’s 6:30 in the morning – you beat the morning rush to work and even grabbed an excellent parking spot before the shift change. Now it’s time to unleash your incredible coding prowess in the system, while enjoying a piping hot cup of coffee! You check your email and see that Management wants you to tackle some of the higher dollar Inpatient accounts today, so you know that you’re in for a “treat.”

You’re only on your first account and so far you’ve spent half an hour locating pertinent clinical documentation – you wonder why all this information isn’t being presented to you in a coherent and consistent manner. You know what information you need to code the chart, so why doesn’t someone configure the system accordingly? You jot down your thoughts and move onto the next account.

Thankfully, you have the correct documentation to finalize coding, but you notice that the account is missing some charges. If you complete coding and push the account through, you know that it will hit some edits in a few days – who wants that headache? So, you email your friend in Patient Financial Services (PFS) and ask her to review the account and apply the necessary charges. Halfway through your email, you wonder if it’s possible to leverage your EHR to route this account to your friend for more real-time analysis and log your findings directly in the system. You know that your friend would appreciate less email clutter and you’d save time transcribing information that already lives in the system. You write down this brilliant idea – you’re chalk full of them today! Well, looks like it’s time to attempt account number three for the day.

You’ve got to be kidding me! You’ve now just stumbled onto your “white whale” of accounts – you’ve been working with PFS, Registration, and Compliance on this account for weeks. Looks like someone has kicked it back to you…but of course, without any indication as to what actions have been taken on the account since you’ve seen it last. Looks like you’ll need to jot down the account and come back to it once Jon from PFS gets in for the morning (ah the cruelties of being an early morning riser). You look over to that piece of scratch paper with your two great ideas and write down a third – better documentation and communication between departments in the system. Hopefully account number four will be a tad easier…

Do your coders or managers ever tell your similar tales about your EHR? Are they constantly complaining about how the system hampers their productivity?

In a day and age that makes coding more difficult than ever (e.g. ICD-10, more documentation tools available to providers, ever-changing billing & compliance requirements, inter-departmental cooperation required in an EHR), it is critical for a healthcare organization to deliver streamlined workflows and a well-maintained EHR so that coders can work more efficiently than ever. It is our job to ensure that they can focus on the skill they have been trained for, coding, by creating efficient workflows and removing barriers to quality & productivity.

At Wilshire, our Epic certified HIM consultants and HIM operational staff combine lessons learned from numerous clients along with our extensive system & industry knowledge to deliver a customized solution for your organization. We leverage our experience optimizing customers’ workflows and system configuration to make sure that coders spend their time doing the one thing that matters most: coding. For as we know, accurate and efficient coding is a precursor for timely billing, which ultimately contributes to your organization's overall bottom-line.

Contact Jen Esterbooks today for more information!