Medical Record Retrieval Specialist

Medical Record Retrieval Specialist’s job is to procure selective medical records from the care providers’ central medical record repositories; such selective medical information may be utilized towards patient-specific needs, clinical verification and follow up, collaborative clinical management, and medical research. More significantly, medical records are retrieved at the request of coding staff, which are essentially responsible for reviewing and verifying the accuracy of clinical data furnished for coding.

Medical Record Retrieval Specialist’s responsibilities include:

• Traveling around providers’ offices within the designated regions, and scanning and copying medical records as required by the principal coding staff.
• Downloading the so collected medical records into a secure data base and make available the data for instant reviewing by the coding staff.
• Maintaining utmost security and secrecy on medical records that are required to be transferred from providers’ offices to their eventual destinations.
• Adhering to HIPAA’s security and privacy norms
• Being adept at using electronic and computing systems that are critical to efficient and effective medical data retrieving
• Planning and scheduling provider office visits in such a way that he can accomplish and furnish the data within deadlines.

Medical Retrieval Specialist’s is evaluated for:

• The quality and the swiftness with which he procures medical records for coding review
• Timeliness with  which he can contribute to averting coding errors
• His contribution to coding accuracy
• His conformity with HIPAA’s norms for handling medical records

Qualification

An aspiring candidate need necessarily qualified with:

• Some form of diploma or graduation in life sciences
• Should be conversant with medical terminology
• An associate degree in health information techniques is also desirable
• Familiarity with functioning of EHR and other practice management systems to help retrieve data instantly.

Other skills that are intrinsic to the job:

• Ability to organize and prioritize tasks
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office suite comprising Word, Excel, and Presentation
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to cope with intense travel

• Medical Record Retrieval Specialists are mostly employed by coding facilities that need to review and establish the accuracy of clinical documentation; they may even work for providers if coding is done internally. They generally work Monday to Friday or 40 hours/week; the work hours sometimes may extend beyond morning shifts, with the possibility of being paid for overtime.
• Career opportunities in Medical Record Retrieving are expected grow exponentially till 2020; the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicts the growth to be anywhere between 15 and 20 percentage by 2020. Therefore, professionals will have ample scope for secure and lucrative employment across the U.S.