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Abby Duncan lives in a town of about 230 people. She came into medical coding with a background entirely in culinary arts. She'd been a pastry chef and worked as the marketing and catering manager for Famous Dave's in California before spending six years as a stay-at-home mom. The search started because her husband was military and she wanted a career she could take anywhere. When he decided to get out, she kept going anyway, because by then she found the work genuinely interesting.
She found coding by Googling remote positions, pre-COVID, and digging into what the field actually required. Nobody in her family worked in healthcare. What surprised her was how much there was to learn just to understand the landscape: memberships, credentialing bodies, the whole structure. Her takeaway was that asking questions is the single most important habit in this field. Coming from the culinary industry, where a question could get you told it was stupid, she found coding noticeably more forgiving.
The moment it clicked was during her training, once she got past anatomy and physiology and into actual coding. She'd open her own medical bills and know exactly what the codes meant. Nobody else in the room could read them, and she could.
Abby didn't wait after finishing her coursework. She took the CPC exam within two weeks of completing her curriculum, prepping mainly by averaging her scores across AAPC's online practice exams until she felt ready. She passed on her first try in November 2022. Her books have no notes in them, only tabs. She worked straight out of the index and relied on rereading chapters and section guidelines whenever something felt foggy. The one thing that caught her off guard was pacing, since the exam didn't show how many questions were left.
The job search was harder than the exam. She went five rounds of interviews with one remote position and lost it to a more experienced candidate, which knocked her down. After connecting through AAPC's Facebook page and watching previous I Am AAPC interviews for tips on networking, she widened her search to include billing roles alongside coding, reasoning that billing is a huge part of coding anyway. She landed a cold application with an orthopedic center with no connections, no referrals. When HR's interview email got lost during a merger between two centers, Abby called the office directly and asked how to reach the head of HR. A phone interview that Friday led to an in-person interview with three supervisors the following Monday, scheduled same-day. She made it work. She was offered the position in early March and started roughly five months after certifying, now coding orthopedics with a foot and ankle specialty.
Her resume was the other turning point. She'd built one through a paid resume builder, but a mentor, her cousin Nancy, told her to add back everything she'd cut. The Famous Dave's marketing and catering role showed business office experience. Retail at The Buckle showed customer service. And instead of writing "stay-at-home mom," she detailed the planning and coordinating that role actually involves. The company that hired her said that specifically helped. Once she added it all in, the interviews started coming.
Abby's advice: don't give up, and don't be afraid to be persistent past the point of comfort. Reach out to people you don't know, ask for your call to be made a priority, keep asking questions, because someone can always help. Her husband is now in coding school full time and has already taken a data entry role at a billing company to get his foot in the door before he finishes. He calls her his guinea pig. She calls herself the pioneer, at least in their family.
She found coding by Googling remote positions, pre-COVID, and digging into what the field actually required. Nobody in her family worked in healthcare. What surprised her was how much there was to learn just to understand the landscape: memberships, credentialing bodies, the whole structure. Her takeaway was that asking questions is the single most important habit in this field. Coming from the culinary industry, where a question could get you told it was stupid, she found coding noticeably more forgiving.
The moment it clicked was during her training, once she got past anatomy and physiology and into actual coding. She'd open her own medical bills and know exactly what the codes meant. Nobody else in the room could read them, and she could.
Abby didn't wait after finishing her coursework. She took the CPC exam within two weeks of completing her curriculum, prepping mainly by averaging her scores across AAPC's online practice exams until she felt ready. She passed on her first try in November 2022. Her books have no notes in them, only tabs. She worked straight out of the index and relied on rereading chapters and section guidelines whenever something felt foggy. The one thing that caught her off guard was pacing, since the exam didn't show how many questions were left.
The job search was harder than the exam. She went five rounds of interviews with one remote position and lost it to a more experienced candidate, which knocked her down. After connecting through AAPC's Facebook page and watching previous I Am AAPC interviews for tips on networking, she widened her search to include billing roles alongside coding, reasoning that billing is a huge part of coding anyway. She landed a cold application with an orthopedic center with no connections, no referrals. When HR's interview email got lost during a merger between two centers, Abby called the office directly and asked how to reach the head of HR. A phone interview that Friday led to an in-person interview with three supervisors the following Monday, scheduled same-day. She made it work. She was offered the position in early March and started roughly five months after certifying, now coding orthopedics with a foot and ankle specialty.
Her resume was the other turning point. She'd built one through a paid resume builder, but a mentor, her cousin Nancy, told her to add back everything she'd cut. The Famous Dave's marketing and catering role showed business office experience. Retail at The Buckle showed customer service. And instead of writing "stay-at-home mom," she detailed the planning and coordinating that role actually involves. The company that hired her said that specifically helped. Once she added it all in, the interviews started coming.
Abby's advice: don't give up, and don't be afraid to be persistent past the point of comfort. Reach out to people you don't know, ask for your call to be made a priority, keep asking questions, because someone can always help. Her husband is now in coding school full time and has already taken a data entry role at a billing company to get his foot in the door before he finishes. He calls her his guinea pig. She calls herself the pioneer, at least in their family.