Woman's Day: 8 New Ways to Work from Home
- By admin aapc
- In AAPC In The News
- February 2, 2012
- Comments Off on Woman's Day: 8 New Ways to Work from Home
Many people are looking for flexible careers and we’ve all heard that health care careers are on the rise (and will continue to rise). Woman’s Day magazine recently ran an article highlighting AAPC as the medical coding expert on such potential careers.
Speaking about the career of a coder: “Government regulations have increased the amount of paperwork involved with insurance claims, so many companies are looking for people to translate information into numerical codes. You’ll need to know general medical terminology, as well as anatomy and physiology, all of which you can learn online or at a community college,” stated the article.
Read the full article here.
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Having the general knowledge of medical terminology, anatomy and physiology will not be enough to get hired by most companies. A career in coding should not be advertised as a flexible career on the rise to work at home. Only highly skilled coders with many years in the field will get hired to work from home. Taking classes online, or getting a certificate from a community college, and passing the CPC test with the designation CPC-A will not get you hired. This is similar to a medical transcriptionist. Many MTs get their CMT after years of work. I have been a medical/secretary/transcriptionist for many years. My job as an MT entails transcribing the operative note the coders bill from, so needless to say, I know more than just general medical terminology, anatomy and physiology. Due to the new technology of voice recognition in transcription, the salaries for MTs have been cut in half. I believed in what the media was saying about jobs in coding, so I enrolled in community college and received a medical coding specialist certificate June 2010. I paid $300 to take the AAPC certification test, passed the test December 2010, and so far no one has hired me. I volunteered as an extern at a billing service company. They were very helpful in making sure I got some hands-on coding and billing. I worked there 4 hours per day for 6 weeks, while continuing to work as an MT in the afternoons. I have attended my local chapter meetings in Atlanta for the past 2 years. I paid my dues and kept up with my CEUs. I have not given up yet, as I have just applied for a position this past week that highlighted my medical background. I will just have to wait on the outcome.
I’m a solo practitioner geernal surgeon and have been using an integrated medical records system for the last 10 years. I believe that many physicians do not completely understand why an electronic medical record system is so valuable. They are lost in the fact that it seems cumbersome to enter the patient’s information. I strongly believe that there is no role for drop-down menus when recording a patient’s history. I continue to use a dictated note as has been done for years, but in my case I use voice recognition to directly import my note into my record system. A computer generated note from drop down menus is really not helpful.The fact that a patient must provide each physician’s office with a medical history at each new patient visit is ridiculous during this age of information technology . A patient transferred from one hospital to another arrives with hand written scribble is ridiculous in 2012.I have worked with a small, user friendly company for 10 years. The system is adaptable and has continued to improve. As a solo practitioner it has been easy to transition my office staff to the current chartless status.I have sought the opportunity to share my thoughts however no one wants to hear from a solo country surgeon. I will continue with my system and continue to enjoy the benefits.I would leave this final note: If a doctor believes that an EMR is there to make things quicker and more economical than he will struggle with the transition. If the doctor realizes that the EMR will make the records transferrable and accessable that adoption will be more smooth.