Medical Coding School

What will you learn in a medical coding school? You will learn the process of transforming narrative medical descriptions of procedures, diseases, injuries or diagnosis into numeric or alphanumeric codes. Therefore, a medical coding school will focus on your basic knowledge in biology and anatomy. For this you will have classes like Anatomy and Physiology, Pathology and Diseases Process and Special Terminology.

Besides these, you will start learning about coding. You will study ICD-9-CM system or maybe the newer ICD-10 system according to AHIMA - American Health Information Management Association. As ICD-9-CM is rather old having almost 30 years old, most probably in the following years, all countries will adopt ICD-10.

A medical coding school also provides courses in law, regulations and ethics regarding healthcare. Your job will not be only codification but also to take decisions because coding is an important step for billing and all the process regarding payments done by patient or CMS. You will also receive valuable information about how to handle sensitive information and what laws are covering this field.

You will also cover software area. They provide classes about medical records or billing software or other software packages used in the process. You will get familiar also with administrative rules, how the system works and what are the basic procedures in a healthcare facility. Also you will learn how the healthcare system is connected with insurance system and you will get basic information about insurance plans and insurance laws.

All this learning process could take two years or four years as full time study specially if you do it during college. The length depends on the type of degree you will get or the type of specialization you are aiming. But there are also a lot of proprietary schools and online courses that you can follow. You can consider online courses if you need flexibility especially regarding your available time.

Attending a medical coding school should be followed by getting one of the AHIMA certificate to demonstrate your competence in this field: Certified Associate or CCA is the starting point. If you aim for a higher level of certification there is Certified Specialist or CCS and Certified Specialist-Physician-bases or CCS-P.

Once you finished a medical coding school you have a lot of job opportunities in healthcare centers, hospitals or insurance companies. You can also look for jobs in research health institutions, clinics or even law companies. But once finished the school or courses you attended, you should never stop learning as new diseases, discoveries, procedures, new drugs or new laws are appearing every day.

Freddie Vincent writes on Medical Coding Schools, and Medical Billing Colleges [http://www.medicalbillingcolleges.org]

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