Clinical Coder

As a clinical coder, you read patient records carefully and assign official codes to every diagnosis and treatment. Hospitals use these codes to bill for the work they do, researchers use them to understand patterns in health, and the NHS uses them to plan which services it needs most. You work with systems like ICD-10 (for diagnoses) and OPCS-4 (for operations), and you have to be precise because errors ripple through the whole healthcare system.

Your day is mostly spent in medical records, reading detailed notes from doctors and nurses, then deciding which codes apply. You'll ask doctors questions when the notes are unclear, to make sure you're coding accurately. You'll also check your own work and others' work for mistakes, create reports showing hospital activity and trends, and keep up with changes to coding rules. It's detail-focused, but your work helps hospitals run better and helps doctors and researchers understand health more clearly.