Steps in Obtaining Medical Coding Certifications

If you want to explore a career in the health care industry but do not want to get involve with the more clinical aspect of the industry, then a career in medical coding and billing may be the right fit for you.

Medical coding and billing ensure the financial health of the health care industry. Without dedicated medical billers and coders, the whole health care business will be in chaos.

Assuming that you’d rather pursue coding than billing, here are some of the steps that you needed to do in order to become a medical coder:

1. Medical Coding Career Training

Training is your first step to starting a career as a medical coder. Start by finding local classes. It’s up to you if you want to get into a coding certification program or obtain an associate’s degree. You can check with your local community college or trade school too if they offer medical coding classes.

E-learning institutions also provide quality medical coding training if you prefer to study at home. Meditec for one is a leading career training provider in the United States that caters to aspiring allied health care professionals. You’d be surprised at how much money and time you can save from these portals.

Now the next step is to determine the type of certification you wish to go for, meaning, if you’d want to be certified as a medical coder for a hospital or physician. By the way, in case you didn’t know, you can also work as a coder for an outsourcing company.

Whatever the case may be, a medical coding training program usually includes the following basics:

• A Study of the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act
• Medical Terminology
• Pharmacology
• Diagnostic Coding (ICD-9 or ICD-10)
• CPT or Procedural Coding
• Anatomy
• Physiology
• Healthcare Reimbursement
• Basic Computer Software

2. Internship

On–the-job training may also be offered by your training provider, in partnership with a testing center or employer. Although unnecessary, you can find internship opportunities in local healthcare institutions to increases your chances of getting hired in the long run.

3. Select the Certifying Body.

The next step for you is to select the national certifying body whose exam you’ll be taking. In the US, you can choose to take your exam with the American Academy of Procedural Coders (AAPC) or the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA). These two certifying bodies have different criteria for the certification exam.

4. Passing the Certification Exam

Finally—on to the exam. If you review hard enough, you should be prepared to take the exam. Remember that when you pass your certification—whichever you chose—your certification will get your foot right in the door.

Just to give you an idea of what to expect from the exams, the AAPC and AHIMA consists of over 100 multiple choice questions. The coverage, as you may expect, focuses on coding terms, billing, reimbursement and solving medical records cases. You will be notified of your status if you passed or failed the exam. Then you will receive your certification in the mail.

Medical coders will only become more in demand in coming years. Good luck on your endeavor!

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The Uses of Medical Coding: Why the Job of a Medical Coder is Indispensable to a Medical Practice

Medical coding is a key process in healthcare information management. The medical coder documents the services a medical practice or service provider provides a patient. He or she is adept at summarizing documents and assigning the right codes to the patient’s diseases and health conditions. These documents will then be forwarded to the medical biller for bills processing.

What are Medical Codes?

Diagnosis codes are standardized by various organizations to monitor the occurrence of diseases and health conditions, from chronic diseases to viral and contagious ones. This allows local health departments, health insurance providers, and government initiatives to track and prevent new cases.

Specific Uses of Medical Coding

Medical codes and classifications are used for the following:
-    Statistical analysis of cases and administration of medical response
-    Reimbursement
-    Research and decision-making
-    Surveillance of disease occurrence and pandemic outbreaks

Advantages of Using Medical Codes and Coding Systems

Medical coding seems to be challenging to newbies in the healthcare information field. Who could blame them? After all, codes merely seem like esoteric letters and numbers combined together to burden coders of making meaning of medical terminologies. But through proper medical coder training, such challenges may be lessened in the long run. The electronics records systems are also easy to use and provide the following advantages to coders:
1.    Coders will eventually get accustomed to the highly accurate codings and standard abbreviations, and will help them become better at editing codes
2.    Since the coding systems are automated, records can be coded quicker instead as compared with manual coding
3.    The new electronic health records system works with most database, saving you time from unnecessary conversions. The system also allows third-party review.
4.    You can add user-reported corrections to a thesaurus and make them available for future coding sessions
5.    You can access any type of coding system dictionaries
6.    You can easily modify scripts and platform for updating coding dictionaries and modify review standards
7.    The new coding systems also automatically produce audits that will ensure your employer’s compliance with 21 CFR Part 11.

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Fast Facts on Medical Billing and Coding

Interested in pursuing a career as a medical biller and coder? Read on to know more about the profession and what the industry has in store for you.

What the Statistics Say

Based on US Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the job outlook for medical records and health information technicians—to which medical coders and billers belong—is seen to rise by 21 to 26 percent from 2010 to 2020. This projection is definitely faster than the average for all occupations and only goes to show how opportunities in the said field are growing. As salary rates go, the median annual salary of medical billers and coders is $37,000 and above. The rates offered tend to increase depending on the level of position and the geographic location.

What Does a Medical Coder and Biller Do?

A medical biller and coder are in charge of encoding the diagnoses of physicians into the patient’s records. Coders, in particular, do some extent of analysis on the physician’s notes to determine the diagnosis. Billers also do some amount of encoding, especially if their job description entails them to. Otherwise, they’ll only have to focus on billing the patient and coordinating with health insurance companies.

Finding a Medical Billing and Coding Course

Searching the right medical billing and coding course for you is now easier thanks to the advent of technology and the prevalence of online learning. One Google search can bring up a myriad of websites of career training providers that offer state-specific medical billing and coding courses. A huge number of these courses satisfy the course requirements of local health departments and employers. http://www.meditec.com, a premier e-learning provider for allied health professionals, is one of the most popular medical biller and coder course provider in the United States.

Billing and Coding Training

Billing and coding training would largely tackle basic medical terminology, claims submission, insurance industry requirements, medical chart coding, specialty coding, policies, and the different kinds of coding systems like ICD-9 and CPT.

Types of Medical Billing

This is not often discussed by information providers but there are two kinds of medical billing: facilities and physicians billing. The most common billing type of the two is facilities billing, which include rehabilitation facilities, homes for the elderly, private clinics and hospitals. The other billing type is physcian’s billing, which require billers to manually complete a CMS/HCFA – 1500 (health insurance) form.

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Health IT Community Urges HHS for New ICD-10 Date

The reaction by the health IT community to the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) postponement of the ICD-10 implementation has been a mixed bag, with many leaders fearing that the delay could disrupt their health IT plans and cause the time and money they have already spent to meet the original October 1, 2013 deadline to go to waste.

ICD-10, the new and more extensive medical coding set, was to be implemented in the U.S. on October 1, 2013, but the debut was pushed back to an unspecified future date. Medical facilities and medical practices—as well as providers of medical billing and coding training—all over the country had been prepping for ICD-10 for some time before the postponement.

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) asked that HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius act decisively when she takes the next steps that will guide the health IT community migrate from ICD-9 to ICD-10 code sets. "We strongly urge HHS to move quickly and decisively in setting a new compliance date for converting to ICD-10," CHIME president and CEO Richard Correll exhorted in a letter to Sebelius.

"Providers have spent millions preparing for a deadline set over three years in advance. Technology has been upgraded, new processes implemented, new hires made, and new education and training regimes established. This announcement has created a level of uncertainty that threatens much of the progress already made by many hospitals and clinics across the country," Correll added.

Meditec.com, like other providers of online medical billing and coding training—as well as medical transcription professional career training and pharmacy technician classes—provides the coursework the medical coding community needs to be ready for ICD-10.

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Survey Shows Concern for the ICD 10 Implementation Delay

Some Fear Fallout from ICD-10 Postponement

Not all have welcomed the postponement of the implementation of ICD-10, the upgrade to the medical coding set currently in use in the U.S. A survey from Edifecs, which develops technologies for regulatory compliance and data exchange, shows that a majority of its respondents said that the ICD-10 postponement does little to improve industry readiness--and can have significant bad effects.

ICD-10 was to debut in the U.S. on Oct. 1, 2013, but its implementation was pushed back to a yet-unspecified date. Medical facilities and medical practices—as well as providers of medical billing and coding training—all over the country had been scrambling to get ready for ICD-10, and many complained that they might not have enough time to complete their preparations.

The survey involved over 50 senior healthcare professionals attending the 2012 ICD-10 Summit, a conference hosted by Edifecs. Some of its major findings are: nearly 64 percent of the respondents believed a delay does not improve readiness; 69 percent said a two-year delay is either “potentially catastrophic” or “unrecoverable;” and 76 percent believed a delay harms other healthcare reform efforts.

Cost was a big concern among the respondents. In answer to a question about the impact of a one-year delay, almost 50 percent said it would increase costs between 11 and 25 percent; 37 percent estimated their costs would balloon to 50 percent.
“The survey results tell us that stopping or slowing down work is a very real outcome of a delay, and it could derail a healthcare organization’s progress. The cost implications alone are worrisome,” said Edifecs CEO Sunny Singh.

The reaction by the health IT community to HHS’s postponement of the ICD-10 implementation has been a mixed bag, with many leaders fearing that the delay could disrupt their health IT plans and cause the time and money they have already spent to meet the original October 1, 2013 deadline to go to waste.

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) asked that HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius act decisively when she takes the next steps that will guide the health IT community migrate from ICD-9 to ICD-10 code sets. "We strongly urge HHS to move quickly and decisively in setting a new compliance date for converting to ICD-10," CHIME president and CEO Richard Correll exhorted in a letter to Sebelius.

"Providers have spent millions preparing for a deadline set over three years in advance. Technology has been upgraded, new processes implemented, new hires made, and new education and training regimes established. This announcement has created a level of uncertainty that threatens much of the progress already made by many hospitals and clinics across the country," Correll added.

Meditec.com, like other providers of medical billing and coding training—as well as Meditec.com medical transcription training and pharmacy technician classes—provides the coursework the medical coding community needs to be ready for ICD-10.

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ICD-10 Implementation Delayed

The implementation of the ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases 10th Edition) diagnostic and procedural coding system has been pushed back indefinitely. This, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

ICD-10, endorsed by the World Health Organization and already the medical coding standard in a number of countries, was to debut finally in the U.S. on Oct. 1, 2013 replacing the erstwhile and increasingly inefficient standard, ICD-9. Medical facilities and medical practices—as well as providers of medical billing and coding training—all over the country had been scrambling to orient their staff to the huge body of new codes that ICD-10 was going to introduce, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), to modernize healthcare delivery.

But some major healthcare providers and organizations balked at the timetable and doubted the advantages that CMS was claiming for ICD-10. The American Medical Association (AMA), for one, urgently petitioned Congress to stop the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act's implementation of ICD-10.  

This February, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the federal government has delayed the implementation of ICD-10. Sebelius explained that they were acting on providers' concerns regarding the administrative burdens ICD-10 would impose on them over the next few years. “We are committing to work with the provider community to reexamine the pace at which HHS and the nation implement these important improvements to our health care system."

Sue Bowman, director of Coding Policy and Compliance at the American Health Information Management Association, however, said that the need for replacement for ICD-9 remains. "Actually, the need for high-quality healthcare data has gotten bigger now with meaningful use and payment reform and value-based purchasing and ACOs and all the other initiatives."

However, proponents of ICD-10, including providers of medical billing and coding training, are raising some concerns about the delay—the second one, in fact, for the new and vastly expanded diagnostic and procedural coding system. Bowman, herself, warned that the delay in the implementation of ICD-10 delays the other benefits of better healthcare data. "Until we have a better coding system we can't really have a better healthcare system and achieve the goals of all of these other initiatives because they all pretty much come down to better data," she said. 

Bowman emphasized that implementing ICD-10 together with the other initiatives, including electronic medical records, accountable care organizations, and bundled payments, is the way to go. “I don't think we are going to see the anticipated benefits of all of the other initiatives unless we move to a better coding system."

Meanwhile, some health IT advocacy groups are strongly encouraging healthcare providers, payers, and technology vendors to push ahead with the ICD-10 compliance efforts that they have already started. The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), which earlier had taken issue with AMA’s stance and successful power play, is urging healthcare providers and practices to switch to ICD-10 as soon as they can despite the official postponement of its implementation.

However short or protracted the new lead time for the implementation of ICD-10 will be, Meditec.com, a major provider of medical billing and coding training—as well as medical transcription professional career training and pharmacy technician training—is continuing its efforts to get the medical coding community ready for the new ICD-10 environment.

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ICD-10 Spurs Medical Billing and Coding Training

The gears are engaged and the wheels are turning for the implementation on Oct. 1, 2013 of ICD-10, otherwise known as the International Classification of Diseases 10th Edition, the “bible” that all medical coders need to follow in diagnosis coding and reporting. And despite urgent appeals by the American Medical Association (AMA) to Congress to stop the implementation of ICD-10, updates of ICD-9 (the current and soon-to-be-replaced code manual) have for all intents and purposes, stopped.

Once ICD-10 is phased in, coders will not only need to master a much wider medical terminology, but will also have to work more closely with doctors on the new codes. Significantly, medical billing and coding training will need to be updated for many schools.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is already focused on ICD-10 and just recently, under authorization by the World Health Organization (WHO), it updated its ICD-10-CM Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting for 2012.

The proximity of the changeover has medical coders scrambling for medical billing and coding training and resources, and training institutions such as Meditec.com are more than happy to provide the coursework.
However, all’s not well with the transition.

The American Medical Association (AMA) is strongly urging Congress to stop the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act's implementation of the ICD-10 code set. The appeal, contained in a letter, also urged the lawmakers to call on stakeholders to find a replacement for ICD-9, the current code set.

Once implemented, ICD-10 will require doctors and their office staff to deal with a staggering 68,000 codes, five times more than the current 13,000 codes of ICD-9.
AMA contended in no uncertain terms in its letter that ICD-10 is devoid of any direct benefit to individual patient care and will only hugely burden medical practice. It also pointed out that the implementation will only compete with other expensive transitions involving quality and health information technology (IT) reporting programs.

In the letter, AMA CEO James L. Madara, MD, said that derailing ICD-10 and finding "an appropriate replacement for ICD-9 will help to keep adoption of [electronic health records] and physician participation in quality and health IT programs on track and reduce costly burdens on physician practices."

Whether AMA is right or not in its protest, the transition to ICD-10 is a major industry undertaking. Meditec.com, which also provides medical transcription training and pharmacy technician classes, offers medical billing and coding training to those who want to take advantage of this suddenly-much-in-demand career.

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Medical Transcription and Medical Coding

What is the difference between medical transcription and medical coding? They seem the same and on a certain level, they really are. In fact, medical transcription training and medical coding training are often mainstays in schools that offer allied health education.

Medical coding is the transformation of descriptions of diagnoses, diseases, injuries, and procedures into alphanumeric codes which are actually universal medical codes. These codes enable accurate recordkeeping of diagnoses and procedures, and offer a way to track diseases and other health conditions over time. Coding makes it easier to access health records according to definite categories such as diagnosis and procedures.

On the other hand, medical transcription is the transformation of voice recordings of diagnoses, medications, and procedures as dictated by physicians or other healthcare professionals into editable text files. Transcribed data are verbatim copies of doctors’ reports.

Medical coding is usually done in a medical or semi-medical setting, often in a physician’s office. On the other hand, medical transcription is often done outside the hospital. Both require a strong familiarity with medical terminology.

A career in medical transcription or in medical coding is financially rewarding. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the medical transcriptionist’s average salary is about $40K, while the medical coder can expect to earn between $22,420 and $35,990. 

To answer the demand for high-quality medical transcriptionists and medical coders, Meditec, a top provider of online training courses, offers online medical transcription training and medical billing and coding specialist training for those who want to cash in on careers that are stable and in high demand.

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Medical Transcription and Medical Coding New Technology for Medical Transcriptionists

This probably was never taught in medical transcription training school or medical billing and coding specialist training, but a new encoding technology is now getting the attention of professional medical transcriptionists and those who are studying to be medical transcriptionists. Called the “HTML Editor,” the fully integrated hypertext markup language (HTML) editor was recently released by Scribe Healthcare Technologies, Inc., a healthcare technology company. 

The evolutionary transcription and editing platform, according to Scribe, significantly expands document creation and management options for medical transcriptionists, who have heretofore used Microsoft Word or some other text editor to transcribe and proofread dictated medical reports.

In addition, says Scribe, with HTML Editor physicians can access (using a password) and review their documents from virtually any spot in the world through a web browser, a mobile device, or a laptop with Internet connection. "Transcriptionists can create structured documents without reliance on MS Word," said John Weiss, Scribe vice president. "Saving companies from expending resources on software installation and upgrades lowers operating costs and lessens support frustration." 

Because HTML Editor has a feature called SmartText, it is able to count template and macro content differently from content that is actually typed in by the transcriptionist. Template and macro content are predefined text, often common terms, that physicians can indicate during dictation to reduce text that will be manually transcribed. This relieves physicians from the burden of dictating entire paragraphs or extensive, confusing medical jargon.

This technology not only is expected to deliver savings to medical professionals and medical facilities that use the services of medical transcriptionists, but actually also boosts an already booming industry. Meditec.com, a top provider of online training courses, offers medical transcription training and medical billing and coding training for those who want to take advantage of a career field that is stable and in high demand.

But what is the difference between medical transcription and medical coding? They seem the same and on a certain level, they are. In fact, medical transcription training and medical coding training are often mainstays in schools that offer allied health education.

Medical coding is the transformation of descriptions of diagnoses, diseases, injuries, and procedures into alphanumeric codes which are actually universal medical codes. These codes enable accurate recordkeeping of diagnoses and procedures, and offer a way to track diseases and other health conditions over time. Coding makes it easier to access health records according to definite categories such as diagnosis and procedures.

On the other hand, medical transcription is the transformation of voice recordings of diagnoses, medications, and procedures as dictated by physicians or other healthcare professionals into editable text files. Transcribed data are verbatim copies of doctors’ reports.

Medical coding is usually done in a medical or semi-medical setting, often in a physician’s office. On the other hand, medical transcription is often done outside the hospital. Both require a strong familiarity with medical terminology.

A career in medical transcription or in medical coding is financially rewarding. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the medical transcriptionist’s average salary is about $40K, while the medical coder can expect to earn between $22,420 and $35,990.

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