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

is medical billing/coding also going overseas? - curly

Posted: Aug 03, 2013

gotta be honest, i despise medical transcription - booorrrrring - BUT i still want to work at home. i know coding/billing probably isn't any more interesting, but because i still want to work at home, i'm considering learning it. does anyone have any knowledge and/or experience with it? if so, is it, too, also going overseas? are there any work at home jobs that are not going overseas?

Billing/Coding - FormerCMT

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I've been doing billing/coding for one specialty for the last six months. I also did billing/coding for a different speciality for a short time 15+ years ago. My experience is that it is much more difficult than MT. I am very detailed oriented, but the details with this job can be overwhelming. My opinion is that unless you go to school, get certified, and work for a hospital for a few years at least, you will not be able to work from home and make $20+/hour. I am working in the clinic but feel very fortunate that somebody took a chance on me as I'm over 50. I make about as much as I was averaging with Nuance, which is half of what I was making as a remote MT for a hospital. I suppose this profession could go overseas as well, but in my situation, it won't. I was an MT for 30+ years, and I would say that billing/coding is maybe not boring but tedious and a brain drain, at least for me. I know people will get on here and post negative comments to this, so please feel free to send me an e-mail if you want any further information.

coding - mt

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Exactly my situation ....and exactly my fears. I figure I can actually do the coding, but I will be swimming in details. Have always been detail oriented, but the over-50 thing should not be underestimated.

Billing/coding - Coder

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Do you mean billing or do you mean coding? The term "billing/coding" usually refers to billing. Billing requires less education, is a little more likely to be something you can do at home, but is tedious to annoying, and pays considerably less than coding.

Coding requires more education and certification by the AAPC and/or AHIMA is almost required. At-home jobs like those you see in MT do not really exist, although some employers like medical centers may allow remoting into work some or most of the time. Coding is challenging to quite difficult, but it pays well. There are a number of routes from coding into health information administration jobs, giving coders more options, but coding is not likely to go overseas for a number of reasons.

You can begin in billing and learn more to go into coding.

Suggest you visit the coding board for more information.

never mind; it sounds hideous - curly

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if i'm bored out of my skull doing transcription, i can't imagine how bad it'd be for me doing billing or coding or whatever else that's like this. i'm ripping my hair out, i'm so bored any more doing mt. rather walk dogs.

I'm bored too. It might help if they paid us better. nm - goodgrief

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xxxx

Never mind, Coder. Good info, and I would love to do - "real" coding. I am nearing

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retirement, but if I knew I could get a job I'd be taking courses now (actually, would have started them courses long ago).

Love a challenge, love work that requires me to analyze, and others who do too will read your post.

Curly, I'd set my hair on fire before I'd do billing. :)

set my hair on fire - great idea! - curly

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that will definitely make medical transcription more exciting! ugh. i really hate it, and i'm searching desperately for something else to do until i sell a book (don't laugh!). saw mike rowe on huckabee last night. i wonder if i'm too old at 50 to learn some of those dirty jobs?? he says you can make a lot of money doing some of those manual labor jobs he's done. most of it sounds better than sitting at a computer for 40 hours a week! zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

"Until I sell a book" - Grate MT

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Great idea! Most MT's consider themselves to be wordsmiths, writers, and the like. It is my dream to write a book about my early childhood and my fantasy for it to be a best seller. My early childhood was much different from that of most of my peers (baby boomers), in that my dad had just started buying a farm the year I was born and he had sunk most of his savings into the down payment, so he had to farm "on a shoestring," as he said. So there were no "storebought" school clothes for us, no brand new toys, no Twinkies in our school lunches. Just brown bag lunches consisting of our mother's homemade whole wheat bread sandwiches, maybe some fresh fruit which our dad would buy by the lug in the fall, maybe a celery stick wrapped in wax paper, perhaps a cookie or two baked by our mother. Just wholesome food different from everybody else's. Plus there would be a huge box of gently used clothes yearly from our cousins who had a father well on his way to becoming a colonel in the Air Force. We three youngest in the family would play out of doors barefoot all summer long, making up our own games, helping out in the garden and strawberry patch, making pets out of all the animals... It was fantastic. I had sort of blocked out those early memories because at the time I was terribly self-conscious at being different. I was ashamed of my whole wheat sandwiches. I was ashamed to walk up to the wastebasket and throw away my peach seed or tomato core from our fall garden... Most days, the scraps left in my lunch sack would make a wet spot that turned into a hole by the time we got off the school bus, so I would pitch out little bits and pieces of the scraps plus the whole sack into the cornfield as I made my way up our long lane. My brother and sister usually folded up their sacks and could reuse them over and over, but not yours truly. We had a radio, but no television, so when listening to the others talking about Gilligan's Island or some other show they had watched the night before, I remained embarrassingly silent. Not to mention the rustic farmhouse with no running water, only a green pump in the kitchen. Instead of central heat, just a woodstove in the living room (we called it a front room) and a cobstove in the kitchen. The memories of sitting around the stove in the wintertime! I would not trade them now for anything! And the outdoor toilet, how embarrassing! Anyway, that is my dream, but that project will probably not be really underway until retirement. I have written several chapters, each sort of in short story form already, but have yet to dredge up some more memories. I know they are up there, waiting to be mined.

My thoughts on that - Coder

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Well, so you're nearing retirement. Are you certain you CAN retire? Maybe if you had something more interesting to do you wouldn't WANT to retire?

Or, how about this . . . after you retire, you could offer volunteer medical bill assistance to old folks and poor people. Believe it or not, there IS a need for that. You can even get paid for it. You review medical bills to find services that were never documented, that were miscoded to a higher-paying service, that should have been included in something else, and bills that doctors got paid for but still billed the patient.

Research is showing that continuous learning helps your brain work into old age. It staves off dementia. The kind of learning where you have to figure things out helps a lot, it seems. Coding is that kind of learning.

Right now, you're sitting there thinking that you can't do this because . . . you're due to retire. Well, that's silly. What are you going to DO when you retire? Sit at home and rot? Why not start learning something now and just see if you can get a job.

I know employers who can't find qualified coders. Not because they don't have experience, either, but because they aren't certified at all, get fired every 6 months, have been in jail, or can't pass the drug test.

While I can't promise that you will get a job, I CAN promise that if you don't try you DEFINITELY won't. If you love a challenge, love analytical work, and have a good attitude, why on earth would you not want to TRY?

Consider it a hobby. Learn coding now as a hobby. Learn it for entertainment. Turn off the TV, learn something new, and then use it to benefit mankind.

I agree about setting my hair on fire before doing billing. Some people just love it, but it makes my eyes cross.

Retirement - Anonymous

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I can't speak for others, but I am approximately 5 years from retirement. I can retire and I want to retire. I've been in medical transcription and HIM since I was 19 and can't wait to get some down time. What am I going to do? Travel, spend time with my family and volunteer, but not as a coder or a consultant. There is a lot to be said for staying mentally active, but there is also a lot to be said for enjoying your physical health while you still have it, and that does not include sitting at a desk for the rest of one's life. People who have been in jail or who have drug issues usually are not trained coders, I'm not sure how you came up with that tidbit. Even if you were privy to something like that, this is not the place to divulge it. Learn coding as entertainment and to "benefit mankind?" Give me a break.

My not retirement - Happy as is

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I reached retirement over 5 years ago now. My true love is to travel, love it and have for years. I have enough coming in with SS and a retirement check to pay bills, buy food and the like but what about the traveling part? There is no way unless I pay for my travels that I would be able to go because I spend a lot, a whole lot on them. Now, being as I only work say 24 hours a week that still frees me up from sitting here at my desk for the rest of my life and yet still have the income I want to be free to spend like I want. I know probably one day my health will be to where I cannot do the things I love but for the moment I just keep plugging away. My 30 year old daughter traveled with me recently and she told me next time she would have to see my itinerary before traveling again, said I had much more energy than she! I always just try to get a good night's sleep and ready to go the next day. Had almost a month off this summer and already planning a trip around Christmas again. It can be done even while working.

Opinon - Anonymous

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Never base your criteria for choosing an occupation on whether it allows you to work at home, my feeling is that is a silly reason to learn anything new. It sounds as if that is your reason for doing MT and you are bored to death. Broaden your horizons and get out of the house.

I agree... - the whole work at home

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thing is what has made MT such a death trap for a lot of us.

nothing is as cut and dry as you might think - curly

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i want to work at home because i am a freelance writer, and i need the extra time that it would take me to travel to and from work. plus, i can somewhat make my own hours. i still need to pay my bills, but this way i have enough money to pay those bills AND write. i'm also looking to downsize so i can go part-time - and if i'm working pay-by-prod (at least theoretically) i can make more per hour, so i can cut my hours down nice and low and go after what i really want in life!

The whole thing has taken MT from - BTDT

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professional people working on-site to many people who should not be working in MT in the first place to be doing so simply because they wanna work at home. I am NOT saying that everyone who works at home falls into the category (I work at home), but the circumstances have attracted a lot of people to the field who might be better working someplace else. Just saying.

Any work that can be done on a computer - can be done overseas, unfortunately. (nm)

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Well, then you're left with cleaning toilets - Coder

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That's a poor attitude with a dismal outlook. Sure, it can be done overseas, but all of it isn't being done overseas.

People from overseas can also be brought in to fill on-site positions. Hospitals here import Irish nurses and software companies import Indian programmers.

Nothing in life is certain, other than the need to continuously learn and evolve with your environment. That's the best way to survive.

If you had been learning something new for the past few years, you would be able to move into a new job now. Seems to me that is a much better situation than troling around here with a "The End is Near" sign.

Actually, I'm currently in school. Problem is, - when I"m done I"ll be 65. Figure it out.

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