Productivity Study

Your inpatient coders are always behind. The supervisor has asked for more staff and the HIM Director agrees with the request. When the Director submitted her request to administration, the Vice President asked her to conduct a productivity study of the local hospitals, and her findings are shown in Table 1.

The Director knows that if she shows this to the Vice President, not only will she not get the positions, but she will be asked to increase her productivity. She can see that she needs to do some more research. You know that the coders at your facility code the charts and also abstract quality indicators. Your research shows that at the other hospitals, the quality indicators are abstracted by staff in the quality management department.

Table 1 Productivity Study of Local Hospitals

	Hospital Or Facility	Hospital A	Hospital B	Hospital C	Hospital D
Inpatient charts coded per day	15	20	22	23	21

Questions:

1. Using the information you have, how can you plan to move forward with your request?
2. Do you need any additional information?
3. If so, where would you go get the information?
4. What arguments can you use to support your need for the additional staff?