COOKED
The modal worker abstracts data from charts into registries (cancer, trauma, EHR quality databases), audits coding accuracy, runs reports, and maintains system documentation — text-in, structured-data-out work that NLP over clinical notes already does at usable quality. Certifications (RHIT/RHIA, CTR) are employer-preferred credentials, not licensure with personal liability, so there is no legal requirement that a human touch the record. What survives is the accountability layer: defending registry data quality to CoC/state accreditation surveyors, resolving ambiguous or contradictory documentation, and owning HIPAA release and system-configuration decisions.
Core tasks are already automatable. Abstracting stage, histology, and treatment dates from pathology reports into a NAACCR-formatted registry record, running quality reports, and reconciling coding to the chart are exactly the extraction tasks that clinical NLP handles end-to-end — a 6 rather than lower only because contradictory or missing documentation still forces a human to go chase the physician for a clarification.
Fully desk- and screen-based. The job is a workstation, a tumor registry application, and the EHR; the 2 rather than 0 reflects walking a floor for paper charts, scanning legacy records, or sitting in on a tumor board rather than any physical task that resists a remote worker.
Certification preferred, not legally required. RHIT, RHIA, and CTR are hiring filters and CoC staffing requirements, not state licenses — no one loses a personal credential-to-practice when a registry field is wrong, and the covered entity absorbs the HIPAA penalty, which puts this at certification-preferred rather than the 11+ of a licensed clinician signing an order.
Anonymous artifact production. Oncologists, surveyors, and researchers consume your abstracts without knowing your name; the 4 rather than 0 comes from the standing working relationships with physicians you query for staging clarification and with the CoC surveyor who returns every three years.
Meaningful discretion. Assigning stage when the op note and path report conflict, deciding whether a records request meets the minimum-necessary standard, and calling reportability edge cases are genuine discretion — but you work inside NAACCR/AJCC/FORDS coding manuals and HIPAA rules that specify the answer for most cases, which caps this at the low end of the discretion band rather than the 14+ of someone making an unscripted call.
Has AI actually changed your work?