Senior Clinical Coder

We are looking to recruit highly motivated and enthusiastic individuals with excellent clinical coding, analytical and organisational skills to join our large and friendly team.

Clinical Coding is fundamental to the national reimbursement mechanism of Payment by Results (PbR) and has a major influence on Trust income and future funding.

You will be directly accountable for improving data quality through clinical engagement, ensuring the ongoing accuracy of clinical coded data and meeting the Trust’s strict contractual deadlines. As well as coding to a high standard, you will work with our Team Leads in provision of mentoring and supporting junior staff, assist in the engagement of internal audit and liaise with senior clinicians where appropriate.

• Interview Date: 18 April 2023
• 37 hours 30 minutes/week
• You will be redirected to Trac to apply for the vacancy. Please expand the job details section and read all of the information before applying for the vacancy.

Who are we looking for?

We are looking to recruit highly motivated and enthusiastic individuals with excellent clinical coding, analytical and organisational skills to join our large and friendly team. You will enjoy the on-going development opportunities that our department provides which will ensure that you have the most up to date and advanced coding skills required to code in a Trust of this calibre.

For a Senior Clinical Coding role entering at Band 5 level you will have successfully passed the National Clinical Coding Qualification (NCCQ) and gained Accreditation and have a minimum of 3 years practical coding experience. Experience of coding across multiple complex specialities is essential and the ability to mentor less experienced coders is another key part to this role.

If you are entering at a trainee level you will be taken through the trainee route with all relevant courses and qualifications fully funded.

For a Senior Clinical Coding role entering at Band 5 level you will have successfully passed the National Clinical Coding Qualification (NCCQ) and gained Accreditation and have a minimum of 3 years practical coding experience. Experience of coding across multiple complex specialities is essential and the ability to mentor less experienced coders is another key part to this role.

Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is one of the busiest, largest and most successful teaching NHS foundation trusts in the country, with over 18,000 staff and an annual income of £1 billion.

Rated ‘Outstanding’ by the CQC for the second consecutive time in 2019, we have a long history of providing high quality care, clinical excellence, and innovation in medical research regionally, nationally and internationally.

We’re also proud to be the second largest provider of specialised services in the country. This means we support people with a range of rare and complex medical, surgical and neurological conditions, cancers and genetic orders.

Our staff oversee around 1.84 million patients ‘contacts’ each year, delivering high standards of healthcare.

We are committed to promoting equality and diversity and recognise the benefit in providing an inclusive environment. We value and respect the diversity of our employees and aim to recruit a workforce which reflects the communities we serve, and is equipped to deliver the best service to our patients. We welcome all applications irrespective of people’s race, disability, gender, sexual orientation, religion or belief, age, gender identity, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity and in particular those from under- represented groups.

Our department delivers effective leadership, career progression and excellent benefits in one of the most advanced teaching NHS Foundation Trusts in the country. We also have a clear, structured career progression pathway and with senior clinical coders having the opportunity to progress into team leaders, auditors, trainers and management positions throughout the Trust.

Job Purpose

• To be responsible for extracting highly complex clinical information from both paper and electronic health records, to translate relevant medical terminology using international and national classifications
• Is required to produce consistent, accurate, complete and timely coded clinical data in accordance with all national standards, local clinical coding policies and commissioner deadlines.
• Requirement to consistently deliver against demanding deadlines and accountable for maintaining accuracy and compliance with frequently changing national standards and clinical coding conventions.
• Ensure targets are consistently achieved for both throughput and accuracy of clinical coded data.
• To work autonomously without direct instruction or supervision when selfallocating work and achievement of daily coding targets.
• Ensure compliance with all Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) applicable to the clinical coding service.
• To be proactive and flexible in moving towards an electronic way of working within a clinical coding setting, as the Trust develops its electronic patient record and achieves its strategic objective of becoming a ‘paper-lite’ organisation.
• To act as mentor to less experienced clinical coders.

Please note it is a requirement of The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust that all successful candidates who require a DBS for the post they have been offered pay for their DBS certificate. The method of payment is a salary deduction from your first month’s pay.

As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement. If it works for the service, we will do our best to make it work for you.