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Has anybody been trained to do medical coding and do they like it? - me

Posted: Nov 10, 2010

Has anybody been trained to do medical coding and do they like it? I am trying to figure out where to go next since transciption no longer pays the bills and I am sick of sitting down for 12 hours a day. I am ready to work away from home. I just do not want to invest time and money in classes where I cannot get a job or where the pay is worse that what we make now.

coding - Raine59

[ In Reply To ..]
You might want to check out the coding/billng board here on mtstars. I'm a former MT of many years who decided to go into coding. I'm currently a student but expect to be finished with my course in a few months. I can't completely answer your questions as I haven't really looked for a coding job yet but I post regularly on the coding board and will let everyone know what happens.

Medical Coding - SM

[ In Reply To ..]
I am also a former MT who switched to coding, and I love it.

If you visit some coding websites, you may notice that coders do not grouse about their work, their pay, or the opportunities available to them. That's because the field pays well, presents challenging work, and gets the respect of employers and physicians. When you are responsible for getting optimum income for a physician, they LOVE you.

Getting a job in coding is probably easier than it was in MT. In nearly all fields, new grads do have to make an effort to get a job and they typically have to start small and work up.

You'll find getting a job a lot easier if you are certified, so be sure that the course you take believes and expects that you can pass a certification exam upon graduation, because they will teach to that expectation. Think twice if they tell you that you'll still need 2-3 years of experience before you will be ready to test, because that is an indication that they are not teaching enough and don't think they need to.

Employers are impressed more by the certification than by what school you attended. If you attend a college, but can't get certified, it isn't going to help you much. (Certification means that you passed an exam like the CPC or CCS, not that you finished a course and got a certificate.)

A good way to explore the coding field in your area would be to go to the aapc.org website and find the local chapter in your area. Attend their monthly meeting and talk to some coders. They will work for small and large offices, for larger practices at medical centers, and for facilities. A lot of those jobs are filled by email and word of mouth, so don't think that what you see on indeed.com and in the local paper is any reflection of the industry. Don't assume that the only jobs are at hospitals, either, because they aren't and those are often the lower-paying jobs.

There are salary surveys on aapc.com, too. You will notice that salaries are better for certified coders, and that they are very high in some specialties.

I'm pointing you to the AAPC because it's important for you to see the side of the industry that has most of the available jobs. The hospital side is great, but there are more jobs in the outpatient area and employers there generally appreciate their coders more.

Thanks for this valuable info - MTLC

[ In Reply To ..]
When I attended a local AAPC chapter meeting, the head of physician coding for a large clinic system was the main speaker. She asked who in the group was a CPC but did not have a job. Several hands went up. She was pleasantly surprised and asked that anyone who was certified and would like a job in the large clinic system to see her afterwards. That gave me a lot of encouragement that work is available in our area.

Most of the newly certified CPCs at this meeting had recently finished their course work at a local community college and didn't have experience yet, but that department head was still interested in hiring them because they had passed the AAPC certification.

Excellent Message! - See below

[ In Reply To ..]
I've seen people go through courses that should have been called, "Introduction To Coding" and they were a waste of time. The people I know who went through them just considered it like you would take a flower arranging class at a community college. They didn't expect to get much out of it and they didn't learn anything that an employer would pay them to do on the job. They can say that they took a coding course and a couple of them actually had fun taking the course. It could probably be compared more with studying calligraphy rather than flower arranging, nothing that you can get a job doing, but just something to do to fill time. I've never been in the position of being bored or needing to fill time, but it worked for them in that way. We're all different. Some of us need to work and others just want to fill time.

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