Assignment Task: Please review Ahima Code of Ethics Cases Assignment Case Studies and provide responses. This assignment will serve as your Term Paper.
1. Analyze policies and procedures to ensure organizational compliance with regulations and standards
2. Adhere to the legal and regulatory requirements related to health information management
3. Comply with ethical standards of practice
Case #1
Since May, you have been working with a recruiter to obtain a new position in HIM. Your experience includes over ten years in inpatient and outpatient coding, you are an AHIMA- approved ICD-10 trainer, and you have worked with your state association on coding projects over the past two years. Nothing the recruiter has presented to you has been a good fit, but in late September, the recruiter calls with positions open for coding auditor.
You have never done that type of work before, but are confident you could learn, and the recruiter gets you a phone interview. During the conversation, the HIM manager for the organization says that she sees you have been an auditor since May. You immediately recognize that the HIM manager has the wrong impression of your experience.
Determine the appropriate course of action in response to the interviewer's statement.
Provide justification based on the AHIMA Code of Ethics.
Reference
AHIMA. 2019. AHIMA Code of Ethics.
Case#2
An inpatient coder has come to you, the director of HIM, with concerns that she has been instructed by the coding supervisor to code all bedside debridements as excisional. When you discuss this with the coding supervisor, she explains that surgical trays are ordered for the bedside and that physicians have been ignoring the queries requesting clarification.
Instead, they orally state that the debridements are always excisional. Therefore, she issued the directive to the staff.
1. Use the ethical decision-making process to determine if this is an unethical situation and, if so, what principle of the AHIMA Code of Ethics or AHIMA's Standards of Ethical Coding it violates.
2. If it is a violation, give your opinion of what the implications might be to the coder, coding supervisor, yourself, and the organization.
References:
AHIMA. 2019. AHIMA Code of Ethics.
AHIMA. 2016. AHIMA Standards of Ethical Coding.
Hamilton, M. 2020. Ethical Issues in Health Information Management. Chapter 21 in Health Information Management Technology: An Applied Approach, 6th ed. N.B. Sayles and L. Gordon, eds. Chicago: AHIMA.
Swirsky, E. 2020. Ethical Issues in Health Information Management. Chapter 27 in Health Information