Question

 
The department director has asked that your team to develop productivity guidelines for the workflow process that can be used for evaluation purposes. Your facility has an average of 200 inpatient discharges a day, 400 SDS discharges a day, 1000 ER discharges a day, and 2000 ancillary and clinic visits a day. There is a three-day drop period (all charts must be coded within three days of discharge). Develop productivity guidelines that will ensure all of the charts are coded in a timely manner and reflect AHIMA standards. Before reaching the coders, the record must be scanned, quality checked, and deficiency analysis completed.
The current staff consists of 2 scanners, 5 quality reviewers, 5 deficiency analysts, 10 inpatient coders, 10 outpatient coders, 10 ER coders, and 30 ancillary/clinic coders
 
Parameters:
 

 
1. Develop productivity guidelines for all job functions in the inpatient work flow process
 
2. Identify area of over and understaffing. Create a proposal for appropriate staffing.
 

Answer 1

PRODUCTIVITY GUIDELINES FOR IMPATIENT WORK FLOW PROCESS:

1- In case of impatient charges: As described above information that there are impatient charges averagely of 200 per day,

in such case following steps can be undertaken by the department director:

a) Take a business workflow inventory: In this context processes and workflows need to be listed , also indivual departments need to be listed so as to avoid wasteful impatient charges.

b) Ranking of processes: In this context so as to avoid the impatient charges the processes to be undertaken need to be ranked i.e the order is to be decided that what is to be done first and further.

2- In case of other discharges such as SDS discharges, ER discharges and other kind of clinical visits:

a) ASSESS EXISTING PROCESSES: In order to avoid such kinds of discharges as well as deficiences the existing processes need to be asses so as to eliminate the cons and overlook the benefits of pros.

b) ANALYZE RESULTS: Once the processes are overlooked the next step is to analyse the results so that in case of deviation better steps can be found out to uplift the performances.

c)ESTIMATION OF PRIORITY AREAS: Further in case of deviations so found out in results priority areas to avoid the deviations should be estimated so as to derive out better results.

PROPOSALS FOR APPROPRIATE STAFFING:

Following proposals need to be undertaken so as to influence appropriate staffing within the organisation:

1- Determination of business goals: Staffing should be done in context to the business goals. The working staff needs to be hired as per the work requirements of the organisation.

2-Establish your current people landscape: Working staff should be hired as per the landscape of current people i.e if already the working potential or some specialised work is available then duplication of same kind of people or working staff should be avoided as it is a much wasteful activity.

3-Identify the people needs: Staffing should be done as per the needs of the organisation. As per the requirement of organisation's tasks working expert should be hired.

4- Staffing projection and ways : Ways in which the staffing to be done needs to be explained and ascertained so that better recruitment can be undertaken which may result in better posession of better human resource.

CONCLUSION: Thus in such case above the points need to be ascertained so that problems maybe tacled to a greater extent.