Your ICD 10 Coder Comes Into Your Office Today And Resigns Or Has To Be Out For The Next 3 Months. What's Your Back-Up Plan?
July 6, 2021
When you think about preparedness, you normally think about a pandemic or natural disaster. The reality is that loss of your ICD-10 coding solution can be huge for agencies today. Considering time constraints and the need for accuracy and compliance, you need to make sure you are covered at all times. Let's take a look at your current solutions, why you need a back-up, and how to pick the right one.
What Are You Doing Now?
Today, you either outsource your coding, it is done in-house by a certified coder(s), or it is done in-house by an employee who is not certified and serves multiple roles within your agency. Realistically, we may often prepare for losses to other key roles within our agency, but miss this one when planning. Considering the short turnover time to complete the initial no pay RAP, agencies cannot afford to have dollars taken away because the RAP is not submitted in 5 days. So, back to the original question: What would you do? Regardless of your coding solution, the problem applies here. Let's look at each coding solution and how to create a proper back-up plan:
- Outsourced Coding: First of all, do you have a designated person or persons assigned to complete all the coding for your agency? If so, then you need to ask the company what happens if you have considerable surge or if your assigned coder quits? Basically, is the coding provider equipped to handle the loss of staff? If not, it doesn't mean you need to terminate services with a company to which you are satisfied. It means you need to put your back-up plan in place now.
- In-House Coding: This needs looked at as well whether you have certified or non-certified coders. If you only have one, then you absolutely must have a solid back-up plan in place. If you have several, the question remains to what extent can they handle the additional work until someone else is hired? Will the quality of work decline because they just need to review twice as many charts in the same timeframe? How many charts will be late? How much can you afford to lose?
What Back-Up Plan Do I Use:
This becomes your basic vetting procedure. Contact some companies that provide coding. Let them look at a few random charts to see how they would code the information based upon what they see in your charts. Especially in the case of non-certified coders, you can often see you are missing a significant amount of reimbursement and have issues with compliance. So, put someone in place. Get your contract signed and set up someone in a back-up capacity for you. Then use the back-up during vacations and surge as well as those unexpected issues that arise. It will develop rapport and a system that makes communication easy with your agency.
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Today, this article will look at little different than out typical articles. We all know the costs of losing employees and trying to hire and train new ones. It is exhausting and expensive. So, we think about our wages and benefit packages all the time. What can we do differently that makes people stay? We can’t change the job and we don’t want to keep people that don’t like the work itself. So, how do we acknowledge employees in a way that is valuable to them and that our businesses can afford to do? 5 Things To Consider About Employee Recognition At Your Christmas Party: 1. Years of Service: These can be based on milestone work anniversaries (5, 10, 15 yrs, etc.). If a person has been at your agency 11 years, you pull them up and acknowledge them in the group of employees who have been there at least 10 years up until the time they hit the 15 years landmark. This way longevity is recognized yearly. 2. Special Employee awards: Now, this may be difficult if your staff is very small, but acknowledge the employee who has gone the extra mile in the job they do. Tell the story. The employee needs to know when the employer is proud of the work that has been done. Consider a plaque or certificate. Don’t minimize the value of the employee having them to display. 3. Acknowledge all employees in the mix: Because we are a clinical industry, the administrative staff is often overlooked on day-to-day operations. Ultimately, don’t miss the chance to acknowledge the employee who was able to catch billing errors or collect on a large account. Staff doesn’t like to hear about money, but those types of collections keep Christmas bonuses in place! So, make sure the other staff knows the accomplishments of the finance department or the office manager that every caller loves to speak to. Don't ever forget the IT staff that is on call more than any clinical person in your agency! 4. Letters from the administration: Add a personal note to your staff either collectively or individually depending on the size of your agency. If you are larger, there are employees you don’t often see or get to talk to on a regular basis, so take the time so send a note with that Christmas bonus. 5. Consider the Christmas bonus: Listen, some of you can afford to do substantial monetary bonuses and that is fantastic. However, if you are not in that position, consider something in its place. Maybe small gas cards go with the letter from administration. With the cost of groceries, consider something that helps with the costs of daily living for employees. Big box gift cards in your area will always be used. You may do a lot of these things on a yearly basis to employees. All this being said, it doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons for acknowledgement throughout the year. However, your annual Christmas party is a good way to do it collectively. Between your annual party, write the individual cards to employees when you hear a patient interaction worthy of praise. Or, maybe you buy a gas card for the employee who has picked up extra shifts and always shows up on time. Ultimately, employees will feel valued. You will not regret the time, effort, and energy put into these efforts. Merry Christmas! If you want help with recruitment and retention strategies for your agency, please call Kenyon Homecare Consulting at 206-721-5091 or contact us online today.