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Do you have a CCS or a CPC credential - sm - Sam

Posted: Apr 14, 2011

I am taking classes for my CPC. Two people I know well have this credential and have great jobs and also teach coding at a college. I am a CMT and want to make a move towards coding. They thought the classes I am taking are fine and I could do them w/o a problem and I will sit for my certification as soon as the class is over, as part of the class. The teacher is a proctor.

I have an associate's degree already and have been an MT for over 25 years.

A supervisor from a local hospital told me she doesn't take anyone w/o a CCS. That being said, she is the INPATIENT supervisor. My course is more preparing me for physician/outpatient coding and that is fine with me.

My thoughts are you take the classes and take a job where you can as THEY train you for whichever branch you go into. Say I find a job coding outpatient surgery - well then they train me to do the coding for their company the way they need it done; not TEACH me how to code but train me for their particular coding job. I figure I am okay with the CCS.

I don't know any fully comprehensive course in inpatient coding and everyone I know was trained on the job to do this. I do not even think I would want to do this for sure. If there is a lack of coders, couldn't they train you as well to do inpatient on the job?

I, in no way, shape or form, feel I know it all or will know everything when done with my course. Just asking some questions of those of you who have been around the coding field for a while.

Anyway, I'd appreciate any thoughts that anyone has on CCS vs. CPC. Thanks.

I've been told that they don't want to teach anyone anything on the job - but I am not an expert

[ In Reply To ..]
I'll let someone else answer. All I can say with certainty is that I've talked with coding supervisors and they say that they don't have time to teach. They want you to have the credentials before you get there because there isn't time to teach you on the job.

Teaching on the job - Anonymous

[ In Reply To ..]
Expecting someone to come in as a new employee and know how to do it all is unrealistic. Even if you're credentialed and can code there are things that every facility does differently and they all have some unique situations. Very few facilities will allow a new coder to work completely independently until they have achieved a certain accuracy level; someone checks your work for a while. Some employers take people from within their ranks and train them and then expect certification within a year or so. Where I work (outpatient) they like the coders to have a CPC.

Thank you - this was exactly my thought - sm - Sam

[ In Reply To ..]
I didn't mean they would TEACH you, I meant, don't places have to train you to do things their way before they set you loose - no matter what your knowledge is already. Also depends if you've always coded in one specialty and now you are going to another specialty - it's not that you don't know how to code but you may need to brush up on a new specialty.

Thanks for your input!!!

Credential - jm

[ In Reply To ..]
If your classes are preparing you for the CPC and you have no inpatient coding education, you will not pass the CCS exam. It all depends on what you want to do. You say you are fine with physician/outpatient coding. Well there is your answer. That is what you are learning, and that is what you want, then you probably want the CPC. Inpatient coding is different. I am not saying you have to have a CCS to do inpatient coding, but you need some experience with it, or at least some education in it before anyone will turn you loose on IP charts. And there are some places that will require CCS for inpatient and some that donâ��t. Start with the CPC and get into it and go from there, or get both, CPC and CCS. Then you will be ready for anything! Are there inpatient only courses out there? I don't know. I think most combine, but I never looked into it. I have a CCS and a CPC-H. Good luck!

CPC vs CCS vs . . . ? - CCS, CPC

[ In Reply To ..]
I have both credentials, do both types of coding for most specialties. The answer I am going to give you is generally applicable to the industry. The answers you may get from most coders or coding supervisors at a hospital may be limited to what they know about their individual job areas, so you have to take those opinions with a grain of salt. They're fine opinions, of course, and you should pay close attention to them if you are looking for a job, but keep in mind that not all coders and supervisors have a broad, industry-wide view. Most people are influenced by the opinions of their professional organizations and by their own circumstances.

How do coders choose whether to do inpatient or outpatient? Some get into one or the other because a job is available there when they need it. Others try both and prefer one or the other. Much of the time, coders learn one, but not the other, and then find the switch so upsetting that they stick with what they know. You know how difficult it can be to switch accounts or specialities in MT--it's much like that.

Back in the olden days, only inpatient stays were coded by medical records departments in hospitals. College medical record programs taught it from the inpatient perspective--that's all there was. When it became necessary to code outpatient services, new diagnosis coding rules and a different procedure coding system were developed for it. It became possible and even desirable for a coder to specialize in one or the other, and a coder could learn coding from one or the other perspectives without ever having to bother with the other.

The CPC is an excellent credential. It is tailored toward outpatient or "physician services" coding. There is a huge market for CPC-credentialed coders. Your course approaches coding from the outpatient perspective. It does not cover inpatient-stay coding at all, but will give you the foundation for coding outpatient services performed at hospitals and similar facilities. Your course probably assumes that you will want to and should be able to pass the CPC exam after completing it (without additional on-the-job experience).

The CCS is an excellent credential. It is tailored toward inpatient or "hospital" coding. The market for hospital coders who code only inpatient stays is somewhat smaller. Hospitals also have a need to code some services provided on an outpatient basis, so some of that comes into play. Educational programs which teach inpatient also have to teach outpatient coding to cover that. The CCS covers inpatient coding and some facility outpatient coding. If an educational program is going to teach inpatient, they also have to teach outpatient. However, there are two ways they can cover ICD-9-CM. In one way, they teach both inpatient and outpatient at the same time. In the other, they keep them straight by teaching one and THEN the other.

When you talk about on-the-job training, you are probably bringing up what you have heard about whether it is possible to pass the CCS without work experience. Some programs assume that it is unlikely that anyone could do this. Others prefer to assume that you can and will want to do this, and they teach to that expectation.

Your course is preparing you for the CPC, and that's fine. You already made your decision, at least for now, about what kind of coding you will be doing. By taking that course, you locked yourself into outpatient.

What about later? You asked about the CCS and mentioned that you didn't know any programs that provided comprehensive inpatient training. You might not know of any, but that doesn't mean they do not exist. All the inpatient coders you know might have been trained on the job, but most of the ones I know required NO on-the-job training.

The inpatient supervisor who told you she would not take anyone who was not a CCS is telling you that she doesn't have time to train you. She is communicating an expectation that many managers have . . . that a person who wants that job will have done what they needed to do to learn what they needed to know in order to DO THE JOB. They expect you to be JOB READY and to show it with the CCS credential.

This is what you said: "My thoughts are you take the classes and take a job where you can as THEY train you for whichever branch you go into. Say I find a job coding outpatient surgery - well then they train me to do the coding for their company the way they need it done; not TEACH me how to code but train me for their particular coding job."

If I were you, I would not express that opinion to a prospective employer, because you would be unlikely to be hired.

In the statement you made that "they train me to do the coding for their company the way they need it done; not TEACH me how to code but train me for their particular coding job" you seem to express a serious misunderstanding of the nature of professional coding. The misunderstand is that coding is done differently based on what companies want. Nothing could be further from the truth. Coding isn't job-specific . . . it's CODING specific. We don't do it differently depending on where we work! Everybody codes the same way. That "one way" is what you are supposed to be learning now.

The view you express communicates that you are getting by with the minimum, expecting that your employer will tell you what to do, and then that's all you will need to learn. Maybe that isn't what you ARE doing, but that's what you are telling us with that statement.

Thanks for this - but a misunderstanding - sm - Sam

[ In Reply To ..]
The first part was extremely helpful and probably what I already knew. I know a LOT of a coders and have had their expertise play into my decisions as well.

The second part where you are quoting me - what I meant was they train you to the job-specific duties, meaning specialties, not the actual coding part. For instance, I have a friend who has been doing coding for years - she teaches it, she consults, etc. She recently got a job in a hospital coding pathology - something she could absolutely do but had never done before and they had to train her on their computer system (not all are the same), how they do things in their department, how their day-to-day schedule works. That is all I meant by "train."

I am treating this as being very similar to MT - mostly all MTs just coming out of school are woefully undertrained. They know what to do but need to be brought up to speed and have a ton to learn.

Thanks for you help. I appreciate your thoughts.

Not the OP, but I always call that Company Orientation - and all companies have to do that

[ In Reply To ..]
You're right. When you change companies, there will always be a time of orientation, adjusting to the new way of getting your work, dealing with questions about your work, and submitting your work, etc. Kind of similar to the old days when you had to find out where the coffee pot was. LOL.

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