The Coder With “20 Years of Experience”

By Carl Stoddard, Doctors CFO

The office thought they had struck gold. Billing had been a persistent pain point, so when a coder applied claiming nearly twenty years of experience, strong confidence, and fluency in all the right terminology, it felt like the solution they had been waiting for. The interview went smoothly. The résumé looked solid. The explanations sounded convincing.

They hired her, gave her space to work, and trusted that things would stabilize. Instead, they slowly unraveled.

When the Numbers Start Whispering Before They Scream

At first, the warning signs were subtle. Accounts receivable began creeping upward. Claims sat longer than expected. Payments slowed, but not dramatically enough to trigger immediate concern. The team assumed it was part of the transition. Every new hire needs time to learn a system, right? But weeks turned into months, and the problems didn’t improve. They compounded.

Eventually, someone took a closer look. That’s when the truth surfaced. She didn’t have twenty years of experience. Not ten. Not even one. The résumé was fabricated. The confidence masked a complete lack of competency. And the financial damage to the practice was very real.

She was terminated the same day.

When a Bad Hire Becomes a Human Crisis

What followed made the situation even harder. After being let go, she claimed she had cancer.

Now leadership was no longer dealing with a simple employment decision. They were pulled into an emotional and ethical gray area that many practices find themselves unprepared for. Team members felt torn. Sympathy clashed with anger. Guilt mixed with frustration.

Meanwhile, the practice still had to deal with the consequences: delayed cash flow, cleanup work, and strained trust within the team.

The Real Cost of a Bad Hire

This story isn’t unusual. It happens more often than people realize. Hiring is not just filling a seat. In a medical or dental practice, it is one of the biggest operational risks you take. One bad hire can quietly damage cash flow, morale, and trust long before the problem becomes obvious.

And unlike equipment or software, people problems rarely come with clean exit ramps.

How Practices Protect Themselves

The lesson isn’t to become cynical or suspicious of every candidate. It’s to build safeguards that don’t rely on trust alone. That means verifying credentials. Checking references thoroughly. Watching early performance indicators closely. And responding quickly when the numbers do not align with expectations.

AR does not lie. Cash flow does not lie. When the financial story contradicts what you are being told, it deserves immediate attention.

Recovery and Prevention

Recovering from a bad hire takes time, but prevention is far less expensive than cleanup.

Strong hiring processes, clear accountability, and early performance metrics protect not just the business, but the people inside it. They prevent situations where leadership is forced to choose between compassion and responsibility. Because ultimately, your obligation is to the practice, the team, and the patients who depend on it.

The Question Every Practice Faces

Every office eventually encounters a situation like this in some form. The question isn’t whether it can happen to you. It’s whether your systems are strong enough to catch it early. What would you have done in this situation? And more importantly, what guardrails do you have in place to make sure you never have to ask that question at all?