Coders Should Pay Attention To Good Ergonomics

As a medical coder, you spend a lot of time at the computer, your heads bent closely over coding reference books and doctors’ notes. Don’t let aches and pains that come from bad workstation ergonomics bother you.

At any point in your medical coding career, whether you’re working in an office or from the comforts of your home, you need to pay close attention to good ergonomics. In fact medical coders who work from home are less likely than the office crowd to pay attention to good ergonomics.

For instance, when a particular medical coder started to work from home, she put off buying a desk and simply plopped herself down for hours on the bed, the coach, or at the kitchen island. As a result, she ended up with chronic low back pain that called for several visits to the physical therapist to correct.

There’s no doubt that working from the couch can be a nice change of scene every once in a while, but work-at-home girls should make it a point to spend most of their time at their desks. In fact, there are various resources at hand to help you ensure your desk keeps you as pain-free as possible.

If you read through various computer workstation ergonomics sites, you’ll see that they recommend documentation holders, a complicated proposition if you are trying to juggle three coding reference books and a paper op note. Some medical coders go for online coding reference tools such as Encoder Pro, Supercoder, or Find-A-Code. There are also coders out there who have two computer monitors at their desks so they can toggle easily between multiple screens to check the multiple reference sources they are working with.