while solving the CPC Practice papers I am having trouble choosing the right option in Anatomy portion & ICD portion. In Anatomy i want to know is there any trick that i could get any clue regarding the right answer. which could resemble little bit with the correct option with using the three books we have in exam. Questions are coming like this where this part of body is based out. true or false questions. see Anatomy is huge portion no body may over come this entirely and they may ask question from anywhere. so tell me any way that i could do best in this regard & Second in ICD like in test question we have four option in one question. if we have two or more then two ICD given to choose the right one in each option so how should we go. Should we proceed towards directly intoTabular Series to confirm the right code, should we go to index first. Either choosing the right option by any other way to get the right one form each of them according to the time saving & time management is assigned for the each question. please give me any solution on that. your help would be really appreciated. any suggestions on that you may mail me out at.
nikhil.jain608@gmail.com.
Thanks & Regards,
Nikhil Jain
When I don't know an anatomy term, and I can't look it up (like during an exam), I look 2 places - first, I'll try to find something about it in the ICD-9 book -
anything at all that can give me an idea of where it's located, or what it is. My ICD-9 book (Ingenix) has little definitions and descriptions under many of the codes, so sometimes I can figure things out that way.
The other way is to find the illustrations in the CPT book. This tends to only be helpful if you have an idea where the anatomical term should be located - as in, what body area/organ system it's from. Page xiv in the front of the CPT manual has lots of prefixes, suffixes and roots for medical terminology, as well as a few commonly used terms, and if you turn the page, there's a list of all of the anatomical illustrations in the book (oddly enough, there are no page numbers, so you just have to flip through to find them). Those tools are invaluable. The test questions are hard to gauge - they can literally be from any part of the body. If you have any anatomical terms in your study guide that made it into the glossary, I'd make it a point to jot those terms down in one of your code books - they're more likely to be on the test than any other terms. Also, if you see one that you're not familiar with in a question, write down its definition as well.
For ICD-9, you always,
ALWAYS look up the code in the alphabetic index, then verify in the tabular. If you don't do both, you
WILL get the wrong code. Many times, there are little instructions telling you exactly where to go, and which codes to use for which conditions. For the ICD-9 portion of the CPC exam, it seems like they have located every instance in the book that will trip you up if you don't refer to both sections, and the answers are meant to trick you if you're not doing it right.
I cannot stress this enough - do not try to skip any steps in the ICD-9 only portion of the exam. Just look the code up the way you're supposed to. For the other sections of the test, which have both CPT and ICD-9 codes in the answers, you can probably just look up the codes in the tabular, if you're just eliminating an answer. (Most of those answers depend on the correct CPT selection, though, so you may not have to look up the ICD-9 codes at all).
Just remember,
nearly all of the answers are in your code books - you just have to know where to look. Tab your ICD-9, and get very familiar with the CPT book from cover to cover - know what's in there, and what pages to look in. I suggest reading over all of the guidelines in both books, if you've got time.
One last trick - you'll have to look in your ICD-9 conventions for a few test questions (I guarantee it) - find the pages with the conventions and separate them from the rest of the pages - when you're holding only the pages with the conventions, take a highlighter, and color the edges of the pages (Just run it around the outside edges - I also colored the page corners on the first and last pages of mine). When you close the book, you'll see a brightly colored stripe where your guidelines are, so they're MUCH easier to find. Hope that helps! Good luck!
