Clinical Coding Officer/trainee Clinical Coding

Clinical Coder AfC B5/B4/B3 depending on qualifications and experience

37.5 Hours per week full time

The Trust is looking for a clinical coder to join our Clinical Coding Team. You must be enthusiastic and a highly motivated individual with excellent verbal and written communication skills. The post requires attention to detail and the use of various IT systems.

This role will involve extracting medical diagnoses and surgical procedures from various source documents and computer systems, translating this into national codes using ICD-10 and OPCS-4.10 classifications and entering the codes into SimpleCode via the Trust’s Patient Administration System (PAS) TrakCare. The department works to strict deadlines in line with Payment by Results and requires a high level of attention to detail and accuracy.

The banding of the role is dependant on the status of the applicant:
Band 5 - Accredited Clinical Coder

Band 4 - Experienced Clinical Coder with NHS England Coding Standards course

Band 3 - Trainee with no coding experience

This role will involve extracting medical diagnoses and surgical procedures from various source documents and computer systems, translating this into national codes using ICD-10 and OPCS-4.10 classifications and entering the codes into SimpleCode via the Trust’s Patient Administration System (PAS) TrakCare. The department works to strict deadlines in line with Payment by Results and requires a high level of attention to detail and accuracy.

At North Tees & Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust our main priority is, and always will be, to provide safe and high quality care to our patients every day; the kind of care we would want for ourselves and our loved ones. We want our organisation to be the best place to work with the right staff, in the right roles, at the right time, to ensure we deliver exceptional patient care and experience.

We will support staff through providing an inclusive and supportive workplace with health and well-being initiatives, staff benefits and opportunities for personal and professional development. Staff recognition is very important to us; as well as performance reviews and appraisals, we recognise staff through Star and Team of the month, colleague recognition - a note of thanks, Managers Awards, Shining Stars and Service Awards.

We support the Making Every Contact Count approach to behaviour change in the promotion of health and wellbeing of individuals and communities.

We recruit for values and “Together we are North Tees & Hartlep

**Job Description**:
**Job Title**: Clinical Coding Officer

**Job Band**: Band 5 / 4 / 3

**Department**: Clinical Coding

**Directorate**: Information & Technology Services

**Location**: Cross site - University Hospital of North Tees and/or Hartlepool

**Accountability**: Clinical Coding Manager
Job Purpose
The post-holder will be responsible for the clinical coding of inpatient and day-case episodes across all specialties provided at North Tees and Hartlepool Hospitals.

The post involves liaising with clinicians and clinical teams on a regular basis to verify data recorded in patient case-notes and on electronic systems.

**Key responsibilities**:
2. Liaise with hospital wards and other departments as necessary to view information in source documentation (case notes), required to complete coding; to take reasonable steps to chase up outstanding source data. Source documents will increasingly include electronic records;
3. Contribute to improvements in accuracy and completeness of clinical coding for admitted care;
4. Work with clinical teams to ensure that palliative care coding is used appropriately and monitored;
5. Utilise the Trust chosen benchmarking system to identify coding quality issues and to monitor progress;
6. Attend meetings to discuss coding issues and data-quality as required;
7. Improve communication between clinicians and clinical coders regarding the coding process, by meeting and liaising with relevant clinicians on a regular basis;
8. Work with clinicians to ensure they understand the coding process and its limitations;
9. Support the Clinical Coding Managers and Training and Audit Team to establish a process to allow clinicians to validate and sign-off their own data quality and resolve their queries;
10. Ensure coding queries are resolved, escalating to the Manager or Training and Audit Team where necessary;
11. Participate in discussions relating to general coding problems and issues, for example, at departmental meetings;
12. Plan and prioritise own workload to meet performance and quality targets and, in a timely manner, advise the Line Manager of any hindrance to the achievement of these targets;
13. Assist in the continuing development and improvement of the Clinical Coding service in order that high quality-data can be collected and produced with minimum delay;
14. Advise the Line Manager on the standards of information provided for clinical coding, particularly if this becomes unacceptabl