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Career Searching - No Name

Posted: Nov 30th, 2016 - 12:23 pm

I have been a medical transcriptionist for 16 years.  I have enough work right now, but I am looking to take a course so that I have something to fall back on.

I am thinking a medical coding course or a medical assisting course.  I see that medical assistants basically work as scribes and document the patient's complaints, history, etc.  They take their vitals, height and weight.  They go room to room with their laptop.  It seems easy and a nice break from transcribing, though I fear the pay is probably super low.  Hopefully by the time I need to switch careers, my kids will be moved out and my expenses will be lower.

As far as medical coding goes, I took 3/4ths of a course through the Andrews School and really enjoyed it and did very well.  I did not complete the course because I was hired by an orthopaedic surgeon to do transcription of IME reports as well as review medical records and provide summaries.  He paid so well, I decided to put a hold on my coding course.

I am still doing the same work, but I am thinking I should maybe take another coding course and study and try to pass the exam, etc.    I feel like with coding, you need to know your way around a medical record, where to find the pertinent information for which you need to code.  I already do this in my reviewer/summarizer position.  I am family with every type of medical record and where to find the information to be extracted.  Now I just need to learn the coding.  And I know that is super involved and different rules apply for differen scenerios and modifiers, etc.  I find it really exciting though.  I loved having my big ICD and CPT books searching for codes when I was taking the course.    It was really challenging and fun.  

The medical assisting courses include coding but not in depth, so I could do that and tap into coding a little and see if I like it.  If so, I can also do a coding course after the medical assisting one, which would be an Associates Degree in Applied Science.  Or I could take a coding course which would be less than a year.  

I just dont know what to do :-(



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