When I was hired I was told that there were people here who could help me as I had my CPC but no "real world" experience. There wasn't. The girl who was doing the office coding was not a CPC and was basically just doing data entry. They had a woman from the hospital doing their hospital coding (outpatient surgery, inpatient pro fee, etc) and if the girl doing the office got confused or needed help she called the other lady.
Our physicians do a fair amount of procedures in the office and so that happened alot. The hospital lady wasn't too keen on losing her extra income so she wasn't always very helpful to me and I basically had to learn everything on my own through trial and error. Honestly though that really is the best way to learn it.
For almost two years I helped the insurance department and that was also a big help in the learning process. Now I basically only working coding related denials and not the rest of it.
I think a great deal of people do not understand that coding and billing classes, especially classes that prepare you for the CPC exam,
can not teach you how to code. All they can teach you is
how to use the books.
Each specialty is different and there is no way that a semester long class (or even a two semester class) can teach you how to code everything. Once you have been hired and are in a specific specialty then you can focus on materials that will aid you in that specific specialty like the study guides for specialty exams. There are also websites and associations for alot of specialties that you can get information from there are links to alot of them in the links section here. On the forums many of the specialties are represented and there are alot of really great people who frequently answer questions if you come across something that you just cannot figure out.
Early on I googled the specialties that I code for and found a good deal of information. Google is a beautiful thing
My favorite thing about coding is that it is a never ending learning process. There is always something new to learn. It is never stagnant. For some people that might be scary or off-putting but for me it is what makes what I do great.