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

coding school - considering going to a school - susan

Posted: Sep 22, 2011

I am an MT who is considering going to school for coding. I am thinking about taking the course through Andrews and will probably start next year because I will have to save up some of the money. I am wondering if you think coding may eventually go the way of medical transcription and be outsourced to India. I do not think it will so I just wanted to get the opinions of other coders. I realize it will be a hard course but I think it will be worth the effort. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I think Coding is a great 2nd career for MTs because MTs are great at it! - My Own Thoughts

[ In Reply To ..]
Nobody knows the patient's medical record the way a medical transcriptionist does. We know what's supposed to be there and where to find it.

As far as the outsourcing thing is concerned, some of the companies will try, especially the foreign companies, but hospitals are getting very concerned with confidentiality of course, but even more. Coding is not only used for tracking diseases and procedures, etc., but for billing. When you start dealing with money, administrators get very nervous about risking hundreds of thousands of dollars of their income.

That said, anything can happen these days. Anybody can do anything, and probably will. We can't live our lives in fear of what might happen, because if we do, we will end up doing nothing.

Andrews also has a way to save money on the down payment. I believe there's a thread below that talks about that.

Coding is a good field for MTs - MT-to-Coder

[ In Reply To ..]
I second that coding is a good field for MTs. You'll probably like it a lot better than MT, too. It uses the reading ability and knowledge of the medical record and medicine that you have now, but adds to it and takes it to a new level.

I doubt that it will be offshored. There are a lot of posts below about that. MT was easy to offshore because it did not directly affect revenue. As the other poster said, coding is too wrapped up in an organization's fiscal stability to let it out of sight. There are also some increasing issues with privacy that are causing organizations to take a second look at outsourcing even within the US. Maybe some doctor's offices might offshore, especially if the doctors are foreign, but those aren't really good coding jobs anyway.

Students at Andrews, especially in their MT program, have kind of a tradition for pre-enrollment fund-raising. They talk about it on other MT boards.

Some of them hold huge yard and even e-Bay sales, sometimes week after week, with friends and relatives either donating items or getting a percentage of the sale amount. Others hold car washes on weekends, clean houses, and cook gourmet dinners. Several have gone into the baked-goods and frozen-casserole industry, filling freezers for friends and relatives, and some have come up with a frozen meal plan where every week they deliver a week's worth of meals. (They don't recommend crafting, though.)

They sometimes find that people will be so impressed by the student-to-be's motivation that they will donate outright. Some students recommend preparing a "business plan" to explain the purpose of the fund-raising. If you were interested in doing this for coding, you could use the job prospect analyses and salary surveys from federal and AAPC websites and a survey of your existing skills to show that you were a good prospect.

Students sometimes mention that doing this really helped them connect with the education--it feels more personal because they invested themselves in it. They are more motivated to make a successful go of it. Thinking back on all the time they spent fund-raising, they are motivated to study because they don't want to waste that. They also like the fact that they do not have the specter of debt hanging over their heads.

I know someone will complain that this post mentions Andrews, but it seems to be the only school that has this kind of weird tradition. Maybe other students have done it, but they don't talk about it like Andrews' students do.

I made $3,000 in a garage sale and never missed the things I sold - Part of that tradition

[ In Reply To ..]
I really didn't want to get rid of some of those things, but I haven't missed even one of them. I have more space now too.

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