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Is RHIT worth it? - sm

Posted: Sep 13, 2010

The hospital where I live has 4 openings for coders, but they all require that you have an RHIT certification. I know in order to have this you must have an AA degree. How many of you have this and would it be better to have this rather than study at Andrews or Career Step?

RHIT - Raine59

[ In Reply To ..]
I can't give you a simple yes or no as to whether getting an RHIT certification is worth it or not but I will tell you my experience. About 15 years ago, I took AHIMA's distance learning program (it was called a "correspondence course" back then) in medical records and got my RHIT certification (it was called ART back then). I had no previous experience in healthcare at all. I did pass the certification exam with no problem. Their course included coding but it was a fairly small part of the course. I thought I would be able to get a coding job and did get a couple of interviews but as I had no experience, they weren't really interested. And to be honest, I don't really think I had enough coding training in my course to be able to do a good job. So just to get my foot in the door, I took a transcription job. Quite honestly, the transcription part of my course wasn't any more extensive than the coding part was but somehow I muddled my way through. As it turned out, I liked transcription and stayed with that for quite a few years with the same hospital until we were outsourced to one of the large national companies and I went home to work on the same hospital I had been with. As the MT profession started to go down the drain, I decided to try to go back to coding but what little coding training I had was now 15 years old. So I decided to take a coding course and am now about 2/3 of the way through my program and hope to be able to get certified and then get a job though it's still hard to get into coding without experience. I think having an RHIT along with a coding certification will help but I wouldn't expect to be able to get a coding job with just that. But back to your question, I'm surprised that your hospital is expecting an RHIT but not a coding credential, although maybe the RHIT programs these days include more coding training than they once did. Is it possible you could contact someone either in personnel or HIM at the hospital and ask if they would consider a CCS or one of the other coding certifications? I hope this is some help.

Thanks so much for your helpful post! - nm

[ In Reply To ..]
nm

Agree with Raine and . . . - More

[ In Reply To ..]
Agree with what Raine said. Be sure about what they require. Some job ads have been on file in HR since 1990 and are just dragged out without anyone really looking closely.

It would be unusual for a facility to require an RHIT only. First of all, the RHIT doesn't demonstrate much in the way of coding. If this were a job coding inpatient, you would want to see a CCS. The CPC, CPC-H, and CCS-P all demonstrate higher coding abiilty than the RHIT.

And what about the RHIA? That's a 4-year degree. Do they not accept that????

If they truly required just the RHIT, I would wonder if the coding supervisor or HIM director had only that credential, with no coding certifications, and perhaps didn't want to worry that a newcomer would outshine him or her.

If there is an HIT program at the local college, it might be that this HIM director is trying to support them. You sometimes see requirements like this in college towns, especially if the person controlling the hiring is on the faculty.

You also might see something like this if the HIM director hadn't kept up with events in the field since 1990. I have seen HIM professionals who were simply unaware that there were coding credentials and/or what they meant. For instance, because the CCS doesn't require any college, some HIM folks think it's a lesser credential. But, you're not getting the credential for the amount of time you spent in school, but for the complexity and caliber of specialized work that you can do.

If it were true that an RHIT was the absolute requirement, I wouldn't qualify for it with an RHIA and several coding credentials. Then again, I wouldn't want to work for someone who was so small-minded or ignorant.

You can learn coding without having to spend 2+ years taking English, math, speech, and whatever else prerequisites and fillers a college requires. You also might benefit from learning coding in a less pressured environment with instructor facilitation if you need it--college coding is taught just like everything else . . . sink or swim. You often don't learn coding very well in college classes, as the substantial number of RHITs and RHIAs taking repeat coding courses indicates.

There are two ways to approach this. You can take the RHIT degree program which might not teach you coding very well, spending 2 or more years in it before being able to work. (A lot of them have so many prerequisites for required courses that you can't even begin the program for a semester or a year.)

Or, you can learn coding first and then finish up the rest of the courses for the RHIT later *if* you later feel that it would profit you. You might find that it won't help your job prospects or your income one bit -- it's *coding* that pays best. The jobs that RHITs do might not seem so appealing later. At that point, if you really want to do that, you can find an online college that will give you credit for your coding certification. Some will give you credit for several courses or will let you test out of them.

Finally, keep in mind that hospitals aren't the only sources of jobs for coders. There are more than 4 jobs in your community--probably hundreds of them--and most of them are at offices, clinics, ambulatory surgery centers, and so forth. The majority of those places won't care about an RHIT at all, but will require a coding certification focused on coding physician services, like the CPC, CPC-H, or CCS-P.

For a better view of the job market, please find the AAPC website (just add .com to that). There are salary surveys, information about non-hospital coding, and you can find your local AAPC chapter. Try attending a local meeting to meet some coders who probably aren't RHITs--you may get a much better perspective on things.

I meant RHIT in addition to CPC - thanks

[ In Reply To ..]
nm

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