Should clinical coding be taught to junior doctors and medical students?

Abstract

Introduction Most medical schools and foundation curricula do not cover understanding of NHS finances and clinical coding. However, foundation doctors produce daily clinical documentation and discharge summaries, especially in surgical departments. We evaluated the effect of a simple teaching session for final year medical students’ understanding of NHS finances and clinical coding. Methods A simple questionnaire was distributed to 28 final year medical students. This assessed each student’s knowledge of clinical coding and NHS finances. A short presentation on this topic was delivered to this same group of students, following which the questionnaire was repeated. Post-session feedback was also collected. Results A significant gap in knowledge was found regarding NHS finances and clinical coding in the pre-session questionnaire. Only half (54%) of the medical students thought that junior doctors should be responsible for clinical coding; this increased to 91% after the teaching session. When asked whether it would be relevant to learn principles of clinical coding before foundation training, 64% agreed prior to the session, rising to 91% afterwards. The vast majority (95%) of participants agreed after the teaching session that an understanding of clinical coding could lead to an improvement in the quality of clinical documentation. Conclusions Most medical students thought it was important for doctors to understand the basic principles of NHS finances, the NHS budget and clinical coding. They agreed that clinical documentation could also be improved if doctors had a better understanding of clinical coding.