Guidelines: The Foundation of Coding

The CPC Preparation course teaches physician office coding, such as how to assign the proper diagnosis and procedure codes from operative reports and patient charts. This course also helps to prepare you for the CPC certification exam. The CPB Medical Billing course emphasizes billing and only lightly touches on coding, and will prepare you for the CPB certification exam. This course teaches medical billing and reimbursement issues, such as how to take the codes that have already been assigned by the coder and process a claim form, and how to work with 3rd party payers to make sure the claim is processed correctly. It is important that a coder understands billing issues as it helps to decrease claim denials and increase reimbursement. An understanding of billing will also expand a coder’s career opportunities.

Credit will not be awarded for educational activities completed prior to certification.

Completing an 80 hour or more classroom course will waive one year experience. A letter or certificate of completion indicating hours completed must be submitted to the AAPC to verify course completion.

Completion of either the CPC or COC Preparation online courses will waive 80-hours of coding education which waives one year work experience towards the A removal. The student does not need to submit proof of course completion, AAPC will verify this experience as met once the course is completed.

AAPC offers training courses for CPC, COC, and CIC certification preparation. The CPC Prep course teaches physician office coding and helps to prepare a student for the CPC certification exam. The COC Prep course teaches coding for an outpatient hospital/facility setting and helps to prepare a student for the COC certification exam. The CIC Prep course teaches coding for an inpatient hospital/facility setting and helps to prepare a student for the CIC certification exam. These are self-study courses in which students work at their own pace, from home, to complete each course within a 4-month timeframe or less. For students who prefer to take a classroom based course, many AAPC certified instructors teach AAPC curriculum throughout the US.