Basics about Medical coding
Professionals from healthcare background are taking medical coding as a career. To be an expert in medical coding, coders need to be certified from AAPC or AHIMA. Both AAPC and AHIMA certification have high value and one can easily get a nice job after being certified. Now, here we will just share how to enter into a career of medical coding and become a certified professional coder . Medical coding is very vast like an ocean. I mean to say, it has many facilities to code like radiology, E&M, emergency, surgery, inpatient etc. Therefore, learning all the facilities is quite difficult sometimes but still you can learn the basic guidelines about how to apply codes while coding medical charts. Now, let us checkout where to start to become a certified professional coder.
Read also: How to improve you skills in Medical coding
How to Enter into Medical coding
To begin with, I would suggest everyone to first get a professional coding experience. This will be difficult initially because as a fresher no one would like to give a chance to a beginner. But, initially if you utilize your precious time to start learning the basics of coding, it would be very helpful from future point of view. Once you get a chance to work in a hospital as a coder for at least 6 months, it will really help to boost your confidence in coding. So, after gaining confidence from a healthy experience, I would suggest to go for a CPC exam. Coders who are not aware of CPC exam paper pattern, I would suggest to solve some model question papers, which will help you in clearing the CPC exam.
Read also: New CPT codes for 2017 in Screening and Diagnostic Mammogram
Practice Tips to become Certified Professional Medical Coder
I would suggest to go for a model sample question paper which has rationales for answers, to understand where you went wrong. Rationales helps in clearing the doubt while solving the question. So, I would suggest to solve some sample papers to avoid committing silly mistakes. In addition, do plan about how to solve the full question paper. Since, the paper is divided in different section it will be wrong to start with difficult section. What I mean to say if we have a surgery question in the beginning try to solve it afterwards since the questions will be too long (around 4-5 lines) which will take time to understand and solve it. Instead, I would recommend to first finish off the questions, which are easy (like one or two lines questions), and simple one word or one code answers. While solving the sample papers do manage your time. Time will go very fast during exam, so keeping checking your number of question answered per hour to manage the time.
Finally I would suggest try to solve as many sample papers for CPC exam as much possible, because it would be really nice if the coder clears the CPC exam on first attempt. Only 70% or above is required to clear the exam which anyone can get it with continuous practice of sample papers and by proper time management during CPC exam. Hope, this these tips will help you to clear the CPC exam in future.