Work of a Coder: Survey Tells Us Who We Are

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Ask five medical coders to describe their work days, and you are likely to get five very different answers. Ask what each coder does, and you'll find that she wear many hats. Coder work responsibilities vary considerably, from managing the entire business for a single practitioner in a rural locale, to billing radiology for eight hours in a large metropolitan clinic, to auditing claims for a nationwide payer organization. Medical coders work in IT environments ranging from totally automated systems using electronic medical records equipped with computer assisted coding, to practices that haven’t begun filing claims electronically.

AAPC leadership serves more than 84,000 member coders, 64,000 of whom are certified professionals. To better meet member needs, AAPC seeks to more fully understand coder workplace responsibilities.

AAPC in January 2008 invited medical coders to participate in a survey on the work they do. Medical coders were informed of the survey through three email invitations to AAPC members; an invitation posted on the public home page of the AAPC Website; and through press releases distributed to numerous magazines and websites with coder audiences.

The survey, made available online through a weblink, was open to responses for six weeks. It garnered 12,068 respondents, of which 93.5 percent were professional coders certified through AAPC. The survey collected demographic information regarding work environment and credentials, and included 40 questions specific to work and working relationships. Completing the exam were 8,975 coders, or 74.4 percent of participants.

Of the 633,000 physicians practicing in the United States in 2005, 15 percent were self-employed, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).Many multi-physician clinics remain independent as well. Each independent practice has created its own processes, policies, and cultures, and providers each view their coders differently. The largest body of AAPC members consists of physician coders employed in clinical practices. Even so, AAPC recognizes that a significant number of its members are coders who are not employed within clinical practices, and that their workday responsibilities were not addressed in The Work of a Coder. Future AAPC sponsored surveys will address their markets more specifically.

What follows is a quantifiable snapshot of the workplace and workday of medical coders in clinical environments. With this data in hand, AAPC is able to assess how the expertise of medical coders is being leveraged in the workplace, and make observations regarding improvements that could be implemented to improve practice management, resource allocations, and coding education.

AAPC thanks all the survey participants for taking the time to contribute to this study. As a result of your responses, AAPC has a far better understanding of the challenges encountered by coders, and will to continue to issue quarterly surveys for members and non-members to weigh in on important issues in their medical workplace.