You don't have to be an IT specialist to carve out a niche for coding in the EMR world. But you do have to understand the documentation guidelines and be able to instruct your IT team that this is what is expected for compliance, and you have to understand how software works, so that you can make suggestions for improvement. We've all seen a lot of technological changes in the past few years, and unless you want to go the way of the dinosaurs, you'll definitely have to adjust. I remember (yikes) a rotary phone hanging on the wall in my mother's kitchen. Now a blackberry not only sends me phone calls, but I can text, surf the net, and schedule my life all within a hand-held device. You have to stay current....in coding as well as in technology.
I see a lot of worrying going on in this board....about not being able to find work, about losing work, and even not being happy with current work. First...if you're unhappy about your situation, none of the rest of us can change that for you. We can make suggestions, but ultimately, your life is in your own hands. If you're unwilling or unable to adjust to this ever-changing industry, then perhaps this isn't going to be the career for you. There, I said it.
Those of us who have found success (and passion) in this field can only direct the rest of you to what has worked for us, or towards what we see as the upcoming trends. It's entirely your choice as to whether or not you're willing to move towards the future of the industry. Entering the coding field these days with no computer literacy is career suicide. Even physicians have to be software-savvy, so nobody is exempt from today's technology. I work for a facility in which the coders are second only to the IT people as the 'techno geeks'. Not a bad place to be, actually, and in fact, my facility spends a great deal of time, energy and money making sure we are all educated and trained, so it's not true that employers are unwilling to invest in their employees. Frankly, if you aren't proficient in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, e-mail, scanning technology and don't understand how software applications work, you're going to find yourself unemployable in about five years, so you might just have to suck it up and invest in further education, unless you plan to win the lottery.
Those of us who can see the forest through the trees are trying to offer some advice for those of you who ask, but I'm not going to sugar-coat the message...I simply want to fairly present what I see as the future of the industry.