A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

Learning coding - MJINATL

Posted: Jan 30, 2012

Is there any coder out there who has 'self-taught' themselves and successfully passed the CCS and working? I'm an MT whose so ready to change to coding, but keep putting it off schooling due to being financially strapped (as MT'ing just barely pays the simple bills.....nothing more). I also think being an MT will put me at an advantage in learning coding than someone 'off the street'/no knowledge of any facet of the medical field. Any thoughts?

My experience - AML

[ In Reply To ..]
Since nobody has replied to this yet, I will tell you my experience:

It really depends on what kind of learner you are. Are you resourceful, do you know how/where to research answers, is there someone you can ask for guidance and what resource/text were you going to use as well reference materials?

Having said all that, I have not taken the CCS yet but hopefully will this year. Last year I took a class at my local university, paid nearly $2000 for tuition and books and passed the CPC on the first try with an 86% with no coding experience at all and with 20 years experience as an MT.

My instructor was not experienced at all in the field and would just read the text to us for 3 hours. We never had any "practice" in class. In fact, we never opened the workbook! So although I had an instructor, I feel like I essentially learned it on my own. As soon as I realized I would need more instruction than was provided in our class, I joined the AAPC, went to local meetings and started networking so when I had a question, I could ask someone who was able to give me answers. Since I wanted to learn coding and didn't just want the credit hours, I did all the problems in the text, not just the odd ones we were assigned, and I also went to the forums on the AAPC web site and looked at questions others were posting and tried to find the answers. I would wait until someone would post the answer and would then compare my answer to the "correct" one. This is another place you can ask questions if you need help.

So really, it all boils down to you; how much time/effort you are going give to this, what your learning process is and how resourceful you can be.

By the way, it was very time consuming to learn, required a lot of hours of dedication to studying and will still require time/effort on your part to stay up to date after passing your CCS or CPC so you will not forget what you learned if you do not land a job in coding right away. I still frequent the forum and learn new things, and I also have a Clinical Coding Workout to keep up my practice.

Good luck to you whatever you decide to do!

Learning coding - MJINATL

[ In Reply To ..]
Thanks so much AML!! Very enlightening reply.

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