Job overview

To provide an efficient and high-quality clinical coding service to support the business needs of the Trust, including Clinical Governance, Information Governance and finance by ensuring accurate translation and input of medical terminology.

To act as an expert senior Clinical Coder, guided by occupational policies, assisting coders with complex coding queries, providing expert advice to other departments on coding issues.

To support in the leading of the coding team assigned to support a specific area of Clinical work. You will be responsible for ensuring that coding deadlines are met and working with senior staff within the department for ensuring that staff are adhering to national and local coding standards, polices and guidelines.

To analyse and extract diagnostic and procedural information from patient case notes and information systems and assign the appropriate code, in accordance with local and national coding practices in an accurate and timely fashion.

Main duties of the job

·   To identify uncoded activity be reviewing the daily discharges reports / uncoded reports

·   Using clinical documentation on AlexHealth to identify, analyse, extract and interpret complex information relating the patients stay.

·  At all times adhering to national standards and local coding policies exercise judgement and initiative in selecting the appropriate clinical codes to ensure that the coding accurately reflects the individual patient episode.

· To use own discretion and judgement to analyse often complex information available using coding rules and conventions to translate this information into the appropriate codes as set out by national guidance (OPCS 4.10 Office ICD-10) or any classification that may be implemented in the future.

·   To routinely code a minimum of 40 episodes per day on average.

·    To negotiate with clinicians over interpretation of coding guidance, escalating to the Assistant Coding Manager as appropriate.

·        To deal with coding queries as and when is necessary throughout the working day and to communicate complex coding rules to medical, clinical, administration staff.

·   To support the Clinical Coding Specialist Health Group Lead in motivating all staff in the Coding Team by discussion and analysis to ensure that the Clinical documentation and the subsequent Clinical coding is of a high quality.

.   To participate in discussions of coding problems and issues with other clinical coders, for example at monthly departmental meetings.

Working for our organisation

Our Organisation

The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust (PAHT) provides a full range of general acute, outpatient and diagnostic services at The Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, the Herts and Essex Hospital in Bishop’s Stortford, and St Margaret’s Hospital in Epping.

We employ 3,500 staff and serve a local population of around 350,000 people living in west Essex and east Hertfordshire, centred on the M11 corridor and the towns of Harlow, Bishop’s Stortford and Epping. Our extended catchment area incorporates a population of up to 500,000 and includes the areas of Hoddesdon, Cheshunt and Broxbourne in Hertfordshire.

Our Values

The Princess Alexandra Promise to our patients as identified by our 3 values which will contribute to improving our patient experiences:

Patient at heart – Always holding the patient and their wellbeing at the centre of our thoughts and efforts

Everyday excellence – Sharing and celebrating our successes, being honest when we get it wrong, giving us the ability to learn from both

Creative collaboration – Knowing strength comes from diversity, we combine our experiences, skills and talents, working together to find new and better ways to care

The Trust believes in investing in all our staff and rewarding high standards of care whilst building for excellence and in return we expect our staff to uphold the Trust values to the highest level.