medcode hub
Overview: Medcode Hub is a concept project for an online coding tool that helps medical coders find the most current diagnosis and procedure codes easily and quickly, and remain compliant with the guidelines defined by CMS and AMA.
Understanding the Domain: A medical coder reviews the patient’s medical report, identifies the diagnosis, procedures, medications, etc from the report, and assigns codes for the services provided to the patient. The medical report, along with the assigned codes, is then sent to the medical biller who processes the claim and sends it to the insurance provider. Medical coders work either in an outpatient setting (like clinics) or in an inpatient setting (like hospitals).
Target Audience: Outpatient Medical Coders.
Understanding the Problem: There are approximately 68,000 diagnosis codes and 10,000 procedure codes. These codes and their guidelines are updated every year by CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) and AMA (American Medical Association). The Outpatient Medical coder uses three code books on a daily basis. As per guidelines, the coder must start their search for the code via the alphabetic index of each code book. This is the only way to arrive at the code which offers the highest level of specificity. However, since medical coders are on the clock for meeting their hourly targets, following the recommended workflow using the three code books takes time.
My Role: I did the research, defined the persona, scoped the project, and created the workflows, wireframes, and the final visual design comps.
Competitor Analysis: Here is a brief analysis of three popular online coding tools in use today. I focused only on reviewing the products based on how the information was presented, and how easy it was to navigate and interact with.
User Persona: I decided to focus the design of MedCode Hub for the outpatient medical coder since it offered more flexibility to customize it later for the inpatient medical coder. I met with two outpatient medical coders and learnt about how they work and what challenges they face.
Information Architecture: Based on my research and explorations, I defined the information architecture of Medcode Hub to bring the search functionality to the forefront and provide quick and easy the access to the index of each code set.
