Data Abstractor position?

Specialties Quality Improvement

Published

Hi! Can someone tell me what a "Data Abstractor" position is? I love paperwork and details, and am happy sitting in front of a computer all day. I would love a position that would allow me to eventually become a Clinical Documentation Improvement Specialist. There is a "Data Abstractor" position available at my local hospital. Would this be a good entry level job?

Specializes in Obstetrics/Case Management/MIS/Quality.
Slhengy said:
I don't think you are understanding what I am telling you. It's not just my hospital....its EVERY hospital. For example, all HCA hospitals in the country are reducing their staff because ALL metrics are going to be pulled out of the electronic record. Once that happens, there won't be a need for physical chart abstractors, regardless of whether you work at Q-Centrix or a hospital. Outsourcing will go away. It's not a stable field to "enter" into.

I would stay put if I felt that there was a future and advancement in Quality. I wouldn't throw away six years if I wasn't absolutely sure that the position is projected to change and/or diminish based on interoperability standards coming from CMS and TJC.

I hear what you have been saying and Q-Centrix has positioned itself to evolve with the changes that are coming down the pike. I'm not concerned one bit that my job will be phased out. I'm in quite a bit of a different situation than a lone quality coordinator at one hospital would be.

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Specializes in Cardiac, Ortho, Med/Surg, ICU, Quality.

Guess we will see about that.

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Specializes in Critical care and home health.

Thanks for you input. I may have to reconsider np.

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Specializes in Cardiac, Ortho, Med/Surg, ICU, Quality.

I would.

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My current position is in Performance improvement abstractor and analyst. There are currently 6 abstractors in our department and we are hiring 2 more. It definitely is a lot of computer work. I had never had experience with this aspect of Nursing field, having been in ED, Critical Care, Radiology and Vascular access. Upon completing my Masters of Science in Health Administration I knew I wanted to expand my experience. As an Abstractor/Analyst at my facility we are responsible for reviewing the medical record to verify if the documentation supports inpatient and outpatient core measure requirements that are reported to TJC, and CMS. In addition to this abstraction we support service lines in obtaining certification like Comprehensive Stroke Center certification, IBD care, Pediatric Cardiology etc. I also review records that have been flagged as having triggered a Patient Safety Indicator, reviewing documentation to verify this and or documentation that supports its overturning. We work closely with other healthcare team members, recommending changes in processes and/or documentation to quality care. I also review every mortality in the organization and send it on to physicians for further review. I have the opportunity to work from home a couple of days a week and the stress is much less. I am over that my adrenaline levels no longer wants to respond to emergent situations. It gives me the opportunity to use my skills that I have honed over the last 30 years to improve the care of more than one patient at a time. It is very much like detective work in electronic form. You will become very familiar with coding and it will open other doors as well.

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Slhengy said:
You can believe what you want but being certified by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information (HITECH Act), I am telling you that chart abstracting is going away. I have seen both the 5 year and 10 year plan of the ONC. I have also been in Quality abstracting for 6 years and it is going to be reduced to crunching data that is coming out of the medical records. Only a matter of time.

You are exactly right. Manual data abstraction will go by the wayside within a few years. Every IT dept of every hospital is attaching the codes for the data behind the scenes in the EHR.

There will always be a need for concurrent review and monitoring to try to improve quality.

I also worked for q-centrix for about a year. This will be a game changer in 5 years.

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Hi, how did you train for the data abstracting job? I would love to know how to train on becoming a data abstractor. Thank you

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You are correct. I called several places and checked on this. I was told by multiple places that this is probably going to be the last year for Hedis Abstracting. I'm glad I didn't pay $350 to take the training. I was told that there are other areas you can go into such as ACO. I'm not exactly sure what that is, but I'm sure going to find out. No need to waste my time learning something that will be extinct after this year. Thanks for your good reporting SLHengy.

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Specializes in Emergency / Disaster.

I was just invited to sit in on a PhD seminar on the use of AI in clinical data. The entire scope of the project is to write code to manually hunt through the non-indexed text fields in medical records to pull out relevant data. Here in a short while - humans won't be needed nearly as much. Computers can search much more quickly than a human ever could. It is merely just a matter of teaching the programs what to look for and also programming them to learn. Humans will only be needed for the few select cases that stand out.

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Hi Jeffrey - Are you directly with a hospital or with an outside service provider? I'm trying to get a sense of how many FTEs a hospital typically hires for quality and accreditation measures.

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I see that an argument for if abstractors were going to be needed in the future or not - this argument was 10 years ago, and I'm seeing a lot of positions available in big hospitals. I returned to school for my NP and now that I have earned that I can not find a position because of over saturation. We use to hear of nursing shortages, and now of physician shortages, however this has not opened up new jobs for NP's. Schools want their money by encouraging students to return and hospitals make promises that are not seen. Our career could be very rewarding, but at this time it's not.

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I'm sorry to hear that Crystal. I'm working on NIH funded research to develop a new technology platform to help improve Abstractor's workflow. I'm sure you'll agree that there is opportunity for automation (for some measures), but that you still need trained eyes to interpret some information. Lack of reporting tools from EHRs and free text data are our two biggest complaints. Could you elaborate on the aspects of your job you find redundant, inefficient or generally not rewarding? Do you have any ideas about what would make your job easier so you can focus on more important aspects of quality? If you had more time, what would you prefer to do? Do you ever consult? Would you consider joining a research study panel as a subject matter expert? We are looking for pain points to solve. ?

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