Health Information Management (HIM) Manager

Category:

Administrative/Clerical

Schedule:

Full-time

Description:

The Health Information Management (HIM) Manager provides strategic leadership and operational oversight for all health information management functions within a rural Critical Access Hospital (CAH). This role oversees both medical coding and medical records operations, ensuring the integrity, accuracy, confidentiality, and availability of patient health information. The HIM Manager is responsible for regulatory compliance, revenue integrity, documentation quality, and effective department operations. This position leads the HIM and coding teams, supervises medical records staff and functions, and serves as a key partner to Revenue Cycle, Compliance, Quality, Clinical Leadership, IT, and Finance.

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in health information management or related field preferred.
• Active RHIA, RHIT, CCS, CCS-P, CPC, or equivalent certification.
• Strong knowledge of CAH regulations, HIPAA, and revenue cycle workflows.
• Familiarity with Clinical Documentation Integrity (CDI) programs.
• Minimum of 5 years progressive experience in HIM and/or medical coding.
• Experience working in a rural or Critical Access Hospital environment preferred.
• Experience with Cerner CommunityWorks EHR preferred.
• Prior leadership experience

Primary job responsibilities:

• Provides effective leadership and supervisory support to staff.
• Selects qualified and competent employees.
• Ensures that all employees are provided with appropriate orientation and in-services.
• Projects and coordinates sufficient staffing to meet departmental demands.
• Assures that qualifications and competencies of all employees are current.
• Conducts performance evaluations in a timely manner.
• Communicates Arbor Health’s vision, mission and strategic plan.
• Facilitates development of a team whose vision and priorities are aligned with organizational goals.
• Establishes performance expectations and provides coaching to achieve positive results.
• Empowers staff to make decisions by providing information and tools.
• Motivates staff and creates an environment where employees thrive.
• Fosters teamwork, effective communication and collaboration among all departments.
• Anticipates department needs relative to finances, space and resources and participate in annual budget process.
• Manages personnel resources and adjusts to changing workload, staff absence, and other needs within the parameters of staffing targets.
• Responsible to provide the tools, equipment, and resources for employees to work safely and efficiently.
• Monitors and ensure compliance with the department budget.
• Formulates, reviews and revises policies and procedures.
• Develops, implements, and monitors department quality and process improvement initiatives.
• Maintains compliance with regulatory and accreditation bodies.
• Provide overall leadership and direction for the HIM department, including medical coding, medical records, document management, chart completion, release of information, and record retention.
• Directly supervise coding staff and medical records staff, including performance management, productivity expectations, and quality standards.
• Develop and implement staffing and coverage models appropriate for a rural CAH environment.
• Establish departmental goals, workflows, and operational priorities aligned with organizational, compliance, and revenue cycle objectives.
• Serve as the escalation point for complex HIM, coding, documentation, or information governance issues.
• As staffing needs require, perform day-to-day coding functions to ensure continuity of operations, timely billing, and compliance.
• Oversee all medical records functions, including record completion, deficiency management, scanning and indexing, document retention, release of information (ROI), privacy safeguards, and record availability.
• Ensure compliance with HIPAA, state and federal record retention requirements, Conditions of Participation, and CAH regulations.
• Maintain policies and procedures related to health information integrity, privacy, confidentiality, and access.
• Partner with Compliance and Legal as needed on information governance and disclosure matters.
• Ensure compliance with ICD-10-CM, ICD-10-PCS, CPT, HCPCS Level II, payer-specific guidelines, and CAH regulatory requirements.
• Oversee internal and external audits, corrective action plans, denial mitigation efforts, and ongoing quality monitoring.
• Stay current on regulatory changes impacting coding, documentation, and health information management.
• Oversee and optimize HIM, coding, and medical records workflows within Cerner CommunityWorks.
• Collaborate with IT, Clinical Informatics, and Revenue Cycle teams on system configuration, upgrades, testing, and training to support documentation integrity, coding accuracy, record completeness, and timely billing.
• Collaborate with providers, nursing, and leadership to improve the quality, completeness, and timeliness of clinical documentation.
• Provide education regarding documentation standards, coding requirements, and regulatory expectations.
• Support or collaborate with Clinical Documentation Integrity (CDI) activities appropriate for a rural CAH setting.
• Work closely with Patient Financial Services, Billing, Compliance, Quality, and Finance to ensure accurate reimbursement, clean claims, and audit readiness.
• Analyze HIM and coding trends impacting DNFB, denials, compliance risk, and revenue performance.
• Collaborate with the Revenue Cycle Director to develop and maintain HIM related policies, procedures, and workflows.
• The HIM Manager is accountable for monitoring, trending, and improving the following KPIs, with targets appropriate for a rural CAH environment: Coding accuracy and audit error rates, DNFB days attributable to coding or documentation, medical records completion and delinquency rates, Coding and HIM turnaround times, Coding-related denial rates, Release of information timeliness, Productivity and quality metrics for coding and medical records staff, Compliance findings resolved within required timeframes
• Other duties as assigned

Standard for portrayal of mission and values:

• Employee demonstrates and fosters the Lewis County Hospital District No. 1 core values of - One team, on Mission. Go out of your way, to brighten someone's day. Own it, embrace it. Care like crazy. Motivate, elevate, appreciate. Know the way, show the way, ease the way. Find joy along the way.
• Employee demonstrates and fosters the mission of Lewis County Hospital District No. 1 to foster trust and nurture a healthy community.
• Is cooperative and supportive to others within the department and hospital providing care and services.
• Treats individuals including patients, co-workers, supervisors, management, patient families, physicians, volunteers, visitors and others with respect, dignity and fairness.
• Behaves professionally and ethically in all interactions with patients, co-workers, supervisors, management, patients' families, physicians volunteers, and others.
• Is consistently courteous to patients, co-workers, supervisors, management, patient’s families, physicians, volunteers and others; greets individuals and provides assistance and direction in an attentive and helpful manner.
• Willingly strives at continuous quality improvement to achieve quality work the first time every time.
• Is willing to learn new procedures and develop new skills for the purpose of improving quality of care and services.
• Willingly participates as a member of work team(s) supporting the goals and objectives of the department and the district.
• When answering the telephone, is courteous to caller, clearly identifies department, name and takes a message or directs calls as necessary in a helpful manner.

Benefits Include:

Medical, Dental and Vision, 403(b) with a maximum match of 6% (match depends on years of experience in the healthcare field), Employer paid life insurance at 1x your annual rate of salary, Employer paid long term disability, EAP, PTO accrual (.0885/hr. up to 40 hours/week) & Paid Sick Leave accrual (.025/hr. up to 40 hours/week. PTO & Sick leave accrual combination meets requirements of Washington Paid Sick leave requirements).