Healthcare Documentation Specialists manage the legal and clinical service documents of a healthcare institution. Their responsibilities include recording the diagnostic and procedural codes, physical examination reports, consultation reports, discharging summaries and other documents relating to doctors, patients and other concerned persons of the institution. Besides healthcare institution, they can also work for different government agencies.

Healthcare Documentation Specialists possess wide range of knowledge and skills to analyze and interpret medical coding, medical terminologies, anatomy, physiology etc. They need to have a command in communication skill both in writing and speaking as well as interpersonal and organizational skills. Besides, they need to maintain the privacy of the patients and secure all the reports safely as the documents are confidential in nature. Above all, the job ensures high level of accuracy and integrity to provide better health services.

Education Requirements:

In order to become Healthcare Documentation Specialist, students have to complete a two-year associate’s or a four-year bachelor’s degree program in Health information management with the course work of Nursing, Medical terminology , Health information management and Health information technology.

After getting the certification from credential organization, the aspiring candidates can obtain the job opportunities. Various organizations, like the American Health Information Management Association and the American Academy of Professional Coders offer different designations in this field.

Salary and Job outlook:

The job outlook for Healthcare Documentation Specialist remains outstanding across the USA. The average annual salary of Healthcare Documentation Specialist was $65,500 in May 2012. It is also projected that the job opportunities in this category would increase by 17% between 2012 and 2020.