About Us

East Lancashire Alliance (ELA) is a not-for-profit community interest company providing services to our GP practice members and offering a portfolio of patient services. All our clinical services are led by clinical leads who work as part of a team with Federation managers.

We are a network of nine PCNs which consist of 48 GP practices covering a population of over 390,000 patients across East Lancashire. Patients are at the heart of everything we do, and we pride ourselves in ensuring our patients feel safe, supported, communicated with and respected, at a time when they may be feeling vulnerable. The Alliance are proud to represent our member practices and to champion our Primary Care Partners, by working with local general practice and other system partners in the provision of patient centred local healthcare services.

Each practice has a close-knit team of staff who collectively seek to improve the health of their patient populations.

Overview of Role

To provide an efficient and high-quality clinical coding service to support the business needs of General Practice by ensuring accurate translation and input of medical terminology. The post holder be part of a team of coders that provide a workflow optimising to General Practices that sign up to the service. Other duties of the role will also include ad hoc admin duties as required.

Key Responsibilities

• To extract the clinical information from the manual and computerised patients’ health records, via EMISWEB, and then analyse that information to assign appropriate clinical codes, with adherence to the rules, regulations and protocols of clinical coding using the GPs clinical computer system.
• To understand, and maintain, the need for accuracy of clinical coding as this has a direct impact on the revenue generation and funding for the Practice.
• To provide cover for absence of coding staff, as required, ensuring continuity of data coding.
• To possess sufficient knowledge once trained to work unsupervised on routine coding, taking advice from a supervisor when appropriate.
• To effectively communicate with coding team, doctors, nursing staff and others concerning coding issues.
• To resolve any coding queries by consulting with line manager, colleagues and by liaising with other medical staff.
• To be able to manage own workload to ensure work is accurate and complete to meet targets and communicate any problems to the Line Manager.
• Undertake other duties as required commensurate with the post.
• To work mainly on own initiative but referring more complex issues to colleagues or Line manager.
• To always maintain confidentiality of all coded and other patient data in line with the Data Protection Policy.
• To attend any meeting that is appropriate as necessary.
• To comply with ELAs policies and procedures and implementing local policies when required.
• To undertake the necessary training courses to develop a good knowledge of Clinical Coding and surrounding coding issues.
• To undertake all reasonable requests from Line Manager.

Standards of Business Conduct

• The post holder will be required to comply with the organisations standing order and always standing financial instructions and, deal honestly with the organisation with colleagues and all those who have dealing with the organisation including patients, relative and suppliers
• The post holder must ensure that their behaviour and interests inside and outside work do not conflict with their ELA position, duties and/or responsibilities
• The post holder must comply with and support the development of the performance standards within the service/department to ensure the service is responsive to and meets the needs of its patients/stakeholders
• The post holder will be required to develop and maintain good working relationships with all patients, service users, staff, contractors and where appropriate, members of the public.
• All post holders who are members of a professional body must comply with standards of professional practice / conduct. It is the post holders’ responsibilities to ensure they are both familiar with and adhere to these requirements and maintain their professional membership to the relevant body

Equality and Diversity & Equal Opportunities

• The post holder must carry out all duties and responsibilities of the post in accordance with the ELA’s Equal Opportunities and Equality and Diversity policies, avoiding unlawful discriminatory behaviour and actions when dealing with colleagues, service users, members of the public and all other stakeholders
• The post holder must promote awareness of and respect for equality and diversity in accordance with Trust policies and procedures
• The post holder is responsible for treating all staff, patients, service users, NHS contractors and the public with dignity and respect always

Professional and Personal Development

• The post holder must ensure that they are aware of their responsibilities by undertaking the ELA Mandatory Training and Induction Programme
• The post holder will be involved in a formal review with his or her manager at least every 12 months. Once performance / training objectives have been set, the staff member’s progress will be reviewed on a regular basis, so that new objectives can be agreed and set, in order to maintain progress in the service delivery
• The post holder will be expected to take responsibility for their own professional development and will be supported by the ELA to achieve development opportunities as appropriate.

Confidentiality & Information Governance

Confidentiality is of prime importance. In the normal course of duties, the post holder will have access to confidential documents and information relating to patients, service users, staff, and contractors, as well as information of a commercially sensitive nature. Such information should not be communicated to anyone outside or inside the NHS unless done in the normal course of carrying out the duties of the post. Disciplinary action will be considered where a breach of confidence has been established

All information obtained or held during the post-holder’s period of employment that relates to the business of the ELA and its service users and employees will remain the property of the ELA. Information may be subject to disclosure under legislation at the Trust’s discretion and in line with national rules on exemption

The post holder must maintain high standards of quality in corporate and clinical record keeping ensuring information is always recorded accurately, appropriately and kept up to date. The post holder must only access information, whether paper, electronic or in other media, which is authorised to them as part of their duties

The post holder must ensure compliance with the Data Protection Act 2018.

Health & Safety at Work

The post holder is required to take reasonable care of the health and safety of themselves and other persons who may be affected by their acts or omissions at work and to co-operate with the ELA in adhering to statutory and departmental safety regulations.

The post holder is responsible for ensuring that they do not intentionally or recklessly misuse or interfere with anything provided in the interests of health safety or welfare e.g., misuse of equipment

The post holder is required to contribute to the control of risk and must report immediately, using the ELA Incident reporting system, any incident, accident or near miss involving patients, service users, carers, staff, contractors, or members of the public

Quality

The post-holder will strive to maintain quality within the practice, and will:

• Alert other team members to issues of quality and risk.
• Assess own performance and take accountability for own actions, both directly and under supervision.
• Contribute to the effectiveness of the team by reflecting on own and team activities and making suggestions on ways to improve and enhance the team’s performance.
• Work effectively with individuals in other agencies to meet patients’ needs.
• Effectively manage own time, workload, and resources.

Communication

The post-holder should recognise the importance of effective communication in the team and strive to:

• Communicate effectively with colleagues, patients, carers, and anyone else associated with the role.
• Recognise people’s needs for alternative methods of communication and respond accordingly.

This Job Description is solely a guide and an example of the kinds of job duties that the post holder is expected to undertake. This job description is not intended to be a complete list of duties and is subject to review as the work of the Department develops and resources change.

An ability to adapt to new circumstances will be essential.

As the duties of the post change and develop the job description will be reviewed and will be subject to amendment, in consultation with the post holder

Job Types: Full-time, Part-time, Permanent, Fixed term contract, Temp to perm

Pay: £12.71 per hour

Benefits:

• Company pension
• Employee discount
• Free parking
• Health & wellbeing programme
• On-site parking
• Sick pay

Experience:

• Microsoft Excel: 1 year (preferred)
• Medical terminology: 1 year (required)
• EMIS: 1 year (required)
• Administrative: 1 year (required)

Work Location: In person