Pictured: Claire Hill (ELHT Clinical Coding Team Lead), Anita Turnbull (ELHT Clinical Coding Manager), Philip Taylor (ELHT Head of Clinical Coding) and Paul Stroner.
Clinical coding specialists at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust (ELHT) have been rewarded for their outstanding performance by winning a prestigious award presented by the Innovation Agency.
East Lancashire Hospitals was among the winners at the North West Skills Development Network’s Informatics Awards, part of the Connect 2019 conference showcasing pioneering work in digital health.
The trust’s Head of Clinical Coding, Philip Taylor said: “It is fantastic for the team to get recognition through the awards for all the hard work they have put in to improve efficiency within the department and the quality of the coding that supports so much of the trust’s underlying data and processes.
“In addition, they have been well supported by the divisional management team and had the chance to work collaboratively with all the other coding departments in the area through the Lancashire Coding Collaborative. The North West Skills Development Network has also helped facilitate some of these improvements and we look forward to working with them in the future.”
Clinical coders are health information professionals whose main duties are to analyse clinical activity and assign codes using a classification system. In simple terms, every clinical service provided by NHS Trusts such as East Lancashire Hospitals generates clinical codes, without the correct clinical code, the local NHS might not assign the correct costs to patients or generate the correct statistical data.
East Lancashire Hospitals’ clinical coding team were named team of the year in recognition of a number of achievements, including five members of the team achieving their National Clinical Coding Qualification, with one coder achieving a double distinction.