Physician Assistant or Acute Care Nurse Practitioner - Thoracic Surgery, Quality, Clinical Documentation (Inpatient), Full-time, Days

About the role

Northwestern Medicine has an exciting opportunity for either a Nurse Practitioner or a Physician Assistant to work in their Inpatient Thoracic Surgery, Quality, Clinical Documentation department.

Responsibilities

• Maintain professional engagement & collaboration with the following:
  • Active, valued participation in M&M and multidisciplinary review.
  • Effective and reliable performance on the periodic occasions when clinical coverage is requested.
  • Engage with respective CDI party (inpatient v. ambulatory).
  • Engage with PB Coding, Inpatient coding, and Rev Cycles at NM.
  • Engage with Physician and APP Support Staff (PASS) Team.
  • Engage with NM & CTI Quality Committee.
  • Collaborate with relevant peers within DoS
• Comprehensive Mortality, Morbidity, and Severity Capture: Serve as the institute's accountable owner for the accurate capture of mortality and morbidity events, comorbid conditions, complications, and procedural detail across every quality, benchmarking, and regulatory reporting framework.
• Independent Documentation Refinement: Conduct concurrent and retrospective chart review for all assigned cases, identifying documentation gaps, inconsistencies, missing specificity, and opportunities for more accurate severity, complication, and comorbidity capture.
• Generate compliant, non-leading clinical documentation queries when direct consultation is not feasible, following AHIMA/ACDIS Practice Brief standards.
• Reconcile final coded data with the clinical record prior to bill drop where the workflow allows, ensuring that the coded MS-DRG, CC/MCC tier, and reportable complications match the documented clinical reality.
• Apply expert clinical judgment to documentation: Recognize when the clinical evidence in the record supports more specific, more complete, or higher-acuity documentation than what has currently been written, and partner with the treating physician to clarify the record accordingly.
• Maintain a clear, auditable rationale — anchored in clinical indicators in the chart — for every documentation refinement, so that any subsequent payer, regulatory, or internal review encounters a record that is both maximally accurate and fully defensible.
• Represent the program in vendor training (Vizient, STS, EHR), translating that content for the surgical and APP audience.
• Participate in multidisciplinary rounds, peri-operative huddles, morbidity and mortality (M&M) conferences, and quality review meetings as a clinical and documentation expert.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree from an accredited school/college of nursing OR master's degree from an accredited Physician Assistant Program
• Acute care certification required for APRNs
• Current license as a Registered Nurse in the State of Illinois.
• Current license as an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse in the State of Illinois.
• Certification as an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse by a national certifying body as approved by the Illinois Department of Regulation