Medical billing and coding is a great career choice. However, if you want to be able to get a good position in this field you need to get the proper education first. The minimum training you should get for this field is a certificate, which doesn’t usually take all that long to complete. For the best results, you should always choose an accredited program. There are a number of American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) accredited medical billing and coding schools available to choose from.
Currently, there are 35 accredited programs available. There are schools offering these training programs in Oklahoma, South Carolina, Maryland, Missouri, Illinois, Washington, Florida, California, Arizona, Minnesota, Texas, North Dakota, Arkansas, Montana, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Nevada, and New Jersey. Some states have more programs available than others.
The job of a medical biller, often called a medical billing specialist if they have certification, and the job of a medical coder is quite different. If you specialize in both billing and coding you are called a medical insurance specialist. If you become a coder you will learn the ICD-9 codes and code medical treatments and services, etc. If you’re a medical biller assistant or specialist you’ll be following up on the claims after they have been coded. And if you’re a medical insurance specialist you’ll be able to do both.
Once you have completed the training to become a medical billing and coding specialist you will need a rsum. Whether your school provides career services or not, you will need to be able to put together a good rsum if you want to have a career in this or any other field. There are plenty of online resources that will show you how to prepare a medical billing and coding specialist rsum. You can choose to pursue a more traditional career in an office within a hospital or doctor’s office, or you can work from home either telecommuting with one employer or finding freelance job assignments through a reputable bidding site.
There is federal money available for online classes and degrees. Getting access to this money would cut your costs also. So just know you don’t need to spend a lot of money to go to medical billing and coding schools. Be careful about signing any long term contract and certainly with local schools you wouldn’t have to do that. Also find out if your local on-campus schools, colleges and universities have medical billing classes online. But check out the money available so you can go cheap or in the case of scholarships or grants, go free.
When you are looking for the best medical coding and billing online courses don’t hesitate to search for reviews, ratings, opinions or even get in touch with people who attended one course or another. Sometimes, the official information you get on a website might not perfectly match with real life.
