Published Jun 17, 2011
littlebrit
8 Posts
What's involved with being a "Discharge Summary Abstractor"? One of our local hospitals has an opening for this position and it falls under the Health Information Dept., but the job description is very brief. Can anyone give me more insight as to what this job really involves day to day.
guest2210
400 Posts
Have you called the HR dept of that facility and asked them to expound on the job description?
That being said, from my experience, if they are about to implement an EMR system, they may need people to do data entry, which could include entering the discharge summaries information for patients, usually going back 12-18 months before the EMR system goes live. Some of the information could be the patient's diagnoses, medications, procedures, medical, surgical family and social histories, scanning reports into a database that will interface with whatever EMR system they currently have or will be implementing.
Your best bet is to contact the HR department.
rninformatics, DNP, RN
1,280 Posts
A discharge abstracter is someone in the HIM/Medical Records Dept who codes or "abstracts" information from the chart after the patient has been discharged. Do an Internet search using the title or search. This is not necessarily an Informatics role.