Many organizations are currently short-staffed in their HIM function and coders are rightly focused on the flow of records into and through their queue each day. In this environment, keeping your staff engaged and motivated to improve and expand their coding skills can be a challenge. The world, and the revenue cycle, will not stop while coders take a beat and work on essential training.

But it is essential. As an organization, you cannot afford poor quality coding. It will take more time to correct errors and fight denials later than it takes to do it right the first time. And more highly skilled, more trained and up to date coders, are more productive. They will get more done, more quickly and they will get it right.

We work with organizations across the country to provide the comprehensive and complete training their coding staff need. They have shared with us their strategies for motivating their staff to take advantage of the training available to them and bring their enhanced skills to their work. Here is how they do it:

1. They determine their training needs. Using internal audits, payer denials, and productivity metrics, they identify the areas where coding skill improvement will have the greatest impact. Individual coder’s skills are evaluated and their individualized training plan starts ‘where they are’ with an eye to ‘where they need to be.’

2. They share performance metrics with their coding team. They engage their staff with information about the overall performance of the coding function and share goals and objectives of the training program. They hire good people and expect them to take personal responsibility for making the improvements necessary.

3. They assign training. Having a robust library of comprehensive and up to date training materials can be overwhelming. By developing a plan or ‘learning path’ for the department, with a cadence of training and dates by which training needs to be accomplished, steady progress can be made. Individual plans address specific gaps in knowledge to be addressed to meet their individual career goals.

4. They set aside staff time for training but also expect their staff to invest personal time in skills improvement. When organizations invest in training and pay their staff for some of the time it takes to learn what they need to, the organization can set expectations for performance that must be met. When individuals invest their personal time to update their knowledge and master new skills, they demonstrate their professional commitment. When both organization and individual have ‘skin in the game’ they are essentially partners in improving the coding function.

5. They invest more time and energy in the individual coders that rise to the challenge. These ‘super learners’ are the future coding leads and auditors the organization will depend on to ensure the coding function is working as it should.

6. They measure their success and share the information with leadership. Using those same internal audits, payer denials, and productivity metrics, departments are able to show improvement, justify past and future training investment, and demonstrate they are on top of their responsibilities within the revenue cycle function.

The science of medicine is constantly changing. It is incumbent on all who work in healthcare, including coders, to continually expand their knowledge and improve their skills to do the important work they must accomplish.