I need help to revise this letter based on the comments below. I have attached additional instructions for this assignment. Thank you!
Comments:
I had a lot of trouble figuring out what you want to do. I think your idea of creating a chat box with auditors might work, but you did not tell me whether you will be able to develop a full project proposal (MA 3) with the following elements: Introduction Problem Objectives Solution Method (optional) Resources Schedule / timeline Qualifications Management plan Costs – both soft costs (time) and hard costs This is listed in the directions for this assignment: https://uth.instructure.com/courses/78473/assignments/246923 You also didn’t tell me who would be the person for your recommendation letter (MA 1) to, and why you are interested in making a recommendation to this person.
Hoa Ly Nguyen
2460 Tan Oak Dr
Dallas, Tx 75212
January 31, 2023
Dr. Kimberly Smith
7000 Fannin, suite 600
Houston, Tx 77030
Dear Dr. Smith:
First, I have to thank you for assigning this assignment. It’s not just an assignment but can be applied in reality in our workplace. It is an exciting and challenging task that we all need to do. It seemed a little overwhelming when I first read the instructions, but when I broke it down by parts, I found it was not that bad. I don’t have any questions as of right now. As going further, I will post on the discussion forum if I have one. Thank You!
As I mentioned in my previous Introduction letter about my weak writing. To avoid choosing topics I don’t know much about, I decided to write a letter to my manager, James Harren. He’s the one in charge of the coding and auditing department. I think he would be interested in these two topics as we always have issues going on with these. The first topic is about How to improve cost and quality for Temp/Contractor Coders. The second topic is Developing and retraining internal staff to better quality and more efficiency.
Before describing my first topic, I would like to mention that I am working in Coding Department for a Level 1 Trauma hospital. It’s busy most of the time, especially in Winter when we seek many patients. It’s not just that, we’re expanding outside of DFW area by adding more clinics to see more patients meaning more charts to review. Our hiring process is not as fast as the growth and development of new clinics and the number of patients. We’re often short of staff and put our billings into backlogs. I have seen many temporary Medical coders join us as contractors. The cost of bringing these coders onsite is not mentioned yet though the quality. These coders are experts in many specialties, but they don’t fit the needs of our business. Why? Each organization has its own training system. For coding, besides following CMS guidelines, the organization has developed its internal guidelines as well. It could take up to six months for a normal employee to get fully trained. For a temp coder, the organization pays them to come and work immediately without training them thoroughly. Therefore, many times auditors have to go after them to fix the problem. It’s like creating double work for the internal employees. For this reason, I would like to write a letter to James Harren, a manager of the Coding/Auditing department to express my thoughts about how to reduce costs on temp/contractors as well as quality for our Coding Department.
For the second topic, I like to expand and think of using it for my assignment. I find it’s more interesting and more room to develop as I go along. The problem we have right now in our department is a lack of communication between teams. We have a coding team, an auditing team, and an educator team. Even though we’re using the same guidelines but there are no such things as black and white in coding. The coder gets trained by the different auditors and will code in that auditor’s way. When she/he switches to a different auditor, it might take a while for him/her to learn the new way, and sometimes that process takes mistakes to learn. If we could develop a better way to communicate between each team by creating a chat box with auditors where all questions as be seen by all coders so that we all learn the same question at the same time. If this problem could be solved. It’s not just cost-effective, in addition, with the well-developed retraining program, our organization will own a quality team of coders, auditors, and educators. When all the team members are on the same page, it will make the whole process much easier. This is why we need to have good communication between us.
Sincerely,
Hoa Ly Nguyen,