Medical Billing and Coding Careers

If you are looking for a flexible way to earn a living, investigating medical billing and coding careers is a great direction to focus on. Unlike many other administrative positions, medical billing and coding positions are always in demand, you can find work in any economy, and you can decide yourself whether you wish to work in a doctor’s office setting, a hospital or run your own business out of your home. On this site you will find an overview of how medical billing and coding jobs work and how you can get one yourself.

Medical billing and coding careers — getting started

Before discussing possible medical billing and coding jobs in greater depth to help you determine whether it is an optimal career path for you, it is important for you to understand what exactly medical billers and coders do.

When you go to the doctor’s office or to a hospital, you are treated for a particular condition in a specific way. Medical coders and billers are both involved in taking in that information of how the doctor and other practitioners treated you as the patient and turning it into useful information for the medical office, but beyond that there is a significant difference in how they work and what they output.

Medical coders take the practitioner’s patient files and interpret the information within into special codes that represent the exact treatments and diagnoses in question. This requires extensive knowledge of medical codes, as well as accessing special classification manuals to find exact codes and ensure accuracy. This is a highly detail-oriented job that requires significant medical knowledge and accuracy, and yet you can easily learn enough about medical terminology to do well as a medical coder whether you currently have medical knowledge or not.

Medical billers typically take the codes generated by medical coders and/or information from patient charts and incorporate this information into bills that are submitted to insurance companies and patients. It is again detail-oriented and an important administrative task needed by every medical practice in the country!

Both billers and coders work in similar ways, and both jobs have a legal/regulatory component to them as well, as it’s necessary to comply with current law when submitting bills and other medical documentation. Likewise, billers often find ways to increase revenues for their doctors by accurately ensuring that all treatments are billed correctly.

Both positions are critical to keeping our medical system working, and you can contribute and earn a great living as you go.

Types of positions available

You will find that there are many different types of medical billing and coding careers available to you.

Your options include:

• a full-time job in a healthcare facility, hospital or doctor’s office
• part-time positions, which are also available
• your own business doing the coding or billing work for a doctor’s office on a contract basis

Those are the basic possibilities, and all provide a solid income for high-level administrative work. And ultimately you have other options as well if you wish to go on to a 6-figure yearly salary or higher.

For example, you might decide after acquiring some medical coding and billing experience that you wish to run a business where you handle the coding and billing for multiple doctor’s offices and facilities, and you might have a pool of several coders and billers performing the actual day-to-day coding work for you while you manage the business side of things.

If you become especially savvy at medical billing and coding, you may also decide to become a healthcare consultant, which is a satisfying and high-paying career that is also in demand.

But right now, if you are just beginning to look into a medical coding career, I am going to assume that you want the basics to make a decision whether this dynamic field is right for you, so I will stick to the basic coding and billing possibilities on this site for the most part.

What you need to consider:

There are several points to consider as you begin contemplating a career in billing or coding, so I want you to ask yourself these questions and be honest with yourself about your responses. Choosing a career is important! Here are the crucial XX questions to ask yourself:

1. Are you interested in medicine, medical terminology and the like? If not, this might be a bad match.
2. Do you like to work independently?
3. Do you enjoy paying close attention to details?
4. Do you have any administrative or clerical experience? If so, was this work enjoyable to you? Would you rather be hands-on with the medical work or handle admin-type work instead? (If the former, consider another type of work related to the medical field.)
5. What kind of work environment would you like to have? Are you better suited to a small doctor’s office, a larger facility such as a hospital or working from your home? Are there suitable employers in your area?
6. Do you have specific needs such as times of day when you need to work? For example, many moms find a way to juggle medical coding and billing work or self-employment while still having time to take care of their kids.

What does it take to embark on a career in medical coding and billing?

First and foremost, you need some training. In other parts of this site, I will share more about medical billing and coding schools and courses both online and offline.

Most successful medical billers and coders ultimately get certified to handle a certain type of billing or coding work, which I will explain more about as well.

Keep looking through this site for more information on medical billing and medical coding and let me know if there are any topics you wish to see here that I haven’t covered. I want to make sure that this site is helpful as you determine whether to pursue medical billing and coding careers and how to get started if so, and that means I need your input!

Had a sick kiddo and lots to do for a few days, but I’ll be posting a new article in the next few days, I promise! Bear with me while I get back to life as usual.

I wanted to give you some very basic information today to help you determine how to raise your medical coding and billing salary right from the start, or after you have been working in the field for a while. Realistically, you will start out in any new field in a salary dependent on what you offer the marketplace and what your local market pays, but within that range, there is a great deal of leeway, depending on what you have in your CV and how well you sell yourself during the hiring process.

If you are first entering the field, the more qualifications you can boast initially, the higher the starting salary that you will earn. So you want to make sure that you have as many of the qualifications that can equal more money in your bag of tricks if you can manage it. Those qualifications include certifications, educational level and related work experience.

Each of these factors individually can be enough to dictate a certain salary range. A closer look at medical coding certifications helps you see that having specific certifications related directly to the work you are being hired for will boost your initial pay rate. Likewise, a bachelor’s degree often helps you, as does having work experience that is somehow related to medical billing and coding, even if it is not exactly that.

If you have been working in medical billing and coding for a while, it may be that you are stuck in a salary rut in your current job, and nothing you do will get you a raise that satisfies you or brings you up to the current market rate. But the only way to find out is to request a raise from your current employer first (in which case, it helps if you know you do a bang-up job and can let your employer know that you know this in a constructive way) and see what happens. It’s always less stressful to stick with your current employer unless the work environment is hostile or otherwise seriously problematic; note that I am not encouraging job hopping, just being honest about what to consider here to boost your income. You have plenty of options to ensure that you make a good living in medical billing.

I have purposely kept things simple here to let you see how easy it can be to boost your income in the medical coding field, and if you have more questions about medical coding and billing salary ranges, please let me know.

Not specifically a question regarding medical billing and coding on initial glance, one of the most pressing questions I get from clients across the board is: How can I get started in a new field as quickly and easily as possible? And the answer, also not specific to this field, is that you have to position yourself so that you look like a highly motivated, talented, experienced prospective employee who is ready to handle what the employer is going to give you in the way of assignments.

What does this mean? In the case of medical billing and coding, it might mean that you show the prospective employer your experience, your certifications, your education or your savvy in some other aspect of the job they are hiring for. So if it is a billing job, you want to show that you know how to handle bill preparation and the coding that goes with it. If you’re talking about a coding job, you want to show that you are familiar with the codes that the prospective employer needs to be utilized in the job.

Recognize that in none of this am I saying you have to have PERFECT credentials or the best background. What you do need is to communicate how your personal assets meet their needs, which is how you get the interview and then get hired.

Medical billing and coding: Getting hired

What ultimately is important to consider is that it definitely helps to have some credentials. Of course it does. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to pull a fast one on you. But at the same time, you don’t have to have the most experience (in fact, in some employers’ eyes, too much experience can be a bad thing for one of many reasons), nor the most education.

You mainly just need to develop the skill to:

a) Be able to handle the job and learn what you don’t already know so that you can do an even better job quickly.

b) Communicate that you want to meet the employer’s needs and either already know how to do that or can easily train to do that on the job.

Much of getting hired is just getting your foot in the door, and how you do that is by wowing your prospective employers with how your make it seem a no-brainer to at least take the time to speak with you. It’s a marketing job as much as anything else, and employers are always looking for motivated, engaged employees who can help them quickly to make a dent in the work that’s piling up while they haven’t filled the position they’re hiring for.

Before you think that I’m saying you should be untruthful, that’s absolutely not the case. If you have zero experience, you can’t lie on an application. It’s not right ethically, and it’s got the potential to hurt your career for life. But you can absolutely go out and do some research on your own, take a course, learn the language that professional billers and coders use and utilize that information to create a powerful cover letter that shows how driven you are to succeed, and that is something employers want to find out about.

If you’re serious about getting into medical billing and coding, you can absolutely ensure that you have covered these bases in your application, and you’ll reap the rewards.

Just a quick note to let you know that we’re taking the next couple days off from publishing because of the holiday. In the meantime, I hope you and your loved ones have a fun-filled new year’s and make a great start in 2012. If you’re thinking about a career change, the new year is always a good time to think about it because you’re in the mode of thinking about what you’d like to change in your life.

So stay tuned here, and come back in a couple days because we’re going to be giving you plenty of medical billing and coding careers advice that will help you make your move into this new career path. Can’t wait for you to see the next few articles I’ve got planned!

Today I’m sharing a really simple way of determining whether medical billing and coding careers are right for you. Because I often give checklists and a long series of questions to help you make decisions that are important for your life, and yet it comes down to a much simpler solution many times, especially for women, whom I find are quite intuitive and can make things easier for themselves if given the option.

One of the very best ways to determine whether a particular life path or career path is suited to you, you can do this simple exercise and find the answer within you that will help you determine your correct answer. Bear in mind that career decisions are often not black and white, but sometimes they can be, and I’ll explain why if that sounds a little wishy-washy. Here goes:

If you have been considering medical billing and coding careers and have been reading over this site, you’ve started to get a feel for how the job works. You’ve recognized that this is office work, that it’s detailed and requires attention to detail, and you have to be able to work effectively without making mistakes. You also know that if you have a job in this field, you’re going to be reading through patients’ medical charts to create superbills containing detailed medical coding that comes from one of several different standard coding sets. And you’re going to have to read about illness and medicine all the time.

So let me ask you this: How does that sound to you? How does it feel when you think about it?

Do you get queasy at the thought of reading about heart conditions or skin ailments or cancer or what have you? Do you hate sitting still for more than 10 minutes at a time? Do you find that your attention span for detail work is only marginal at best?

Again, how does it make you feel, realistically, when you think about the daily details of the job?

The simple fact is that there are dozens of other career possibilities out there, even within the medical realm, that don’t require you to sit still or do detailed paperwork. You’ll have to seek employment elsewhere if you find medical matters upsetting or unpleasant, but perhaps you can see here that you have options. As a result, I want you to think about this again in a very basic way: Sit down in a quiet place, take a few moments, think through what your day-to-day work will be like, don’t think about the paycheck itself because there are other jobs out there that pay just as well, and just consider what feels right to you. If you’re not a good match for medical billing and coding careers, you will find something else out there — no question about it.

If you have taken a look at other posts here on my site, you are already starting to get serious about getting into this career path, and that means it’s time for you to consider medical billing and coding schools. I’ll give you greater info about that on another page on this site because it’s a whole subject unto itself.

The subject of today’s article, though, is the matter of finding a job in medical reimbursement without any experience or education in the field, which can be tricky and yet absolutely can be done.

As a reminder, there are ways to get into medical coding without attending a school beforehand, but it’s going to take a little legwork on your end.

How to get the job without attending medical billing and coding schools

If you have not attended medical billing and coding schools, the simple fact is that you’re going to need to prove to potential employers that they have a reason to take your application seriously. Employers need to know that the applicants they are seriously considering have a desire to be there beyond a paycheck (OK, OK, we all want to learn money from our jobs, but what the person doing the hiring wants to know is that you’re driven enough to do a good job whether they’re standing there over you and monitoring your work or not). They want to know that you’re interested, interesting and skilled in some way that shows you will thrive in the position they are seeking to fill. And they want reassurance within your application that they are not wasting their time or their superiors’ time by interviewing you. Their time is valuable, and you can show respect for that and prove your value as a prospective employee without attending medical billing and coding schools.

What that means is that, for example, you may need to do a bit of research on the medical practice or facility to which you wish to apply and use that knowledge to create a cover letter and resume that really “wows” their HR department or the person responsible for hiring. You may want to include a great deal of information about your level of interest in their subject matter (for example, a psychiatrist’s office or neurology or whatever), and you need also to ensure that your application is very professional in appearance. That does not mean you have to strive for perfection to the point of spending all your time on a single application; certainly you need to apply to several different positions that interest you. But you also need to ensure that your resume is written well, stresses your personal skills and assets and makes clear that you are an excellent choice for the job.

In an upcoming article, I will share more about how to find the right medical billing and coding schools if you have no experience in this field, but in the meantime, I think you can see that it’s viable to find a job even without experience — if you get the details of your application right, that is.

I want to take this moment to wish you and your loved ones a very happy, healthy, wonderful holiday regardless of how you celebrate, and I hope that you have a magical, restful few days of respite during these cold winter days. I’ll be adding some new articles over the next few days as time permits (not on Christmas day, though — I’ll be spending time with my husband and kids and living up our brief vacation from “real life”) and I’ll be sharing all kinds of helpful advice to help you with your career decision.

I’m signing off for a few days, but will be back in touch very soon. Again, happy holidays, and all the best to you and yours!

Since I just started this site and have been telling clients and friends about it, I’ve been getting asked why it is that I came to start a site about medical billing and coding, so I’d like to explain:

These days I am a lifestyle coach working with women, and I love what I do (really, truly — it’s a calling for me). I’ve done this since 2008, and I find every day in every interaction that it is such a blessing to be able to help other people discover their best possible lifestyle. Because this stuff matters. What you choose to do with your life matters.

And that gets me back to medical billing and coding. Because, you see, I know from working with my clients that there are many folks out there, particularly many women with kids, who are working in jobs that they don’t love. The “having kids” part is something that makes a huge impact on the decisions we make as moms because suddenly every moment we have away from our kids counts, and we also need more stability, reliability and flexibility in our jobs so that we can accommodate our kids. As a result, I am creating this and eventually several other sites on different jobs that are great to have — so that my clients can learn about new fields, so that you (whoever you are, out there in Internet land) can discover career possibilities, so that I can share what I know in a convenient format. And the medical reimbursement field is one of the best possible areas that you can go into if you are detail-oriented, task-driven and want steady, stable, always-in-demand work.

I first learned about medical billing and coding as a field when one of my close friends began working in medical reimbursement. She loves her job, and her discussion of what it entails made it sound like a good match for many. And upon further research, I learned that you can achieve a solid salary, make career advancements easily both within an organization and by switching jobs, and upgrade your education to afford yourself more potential — all big wins in my book. We need upward mobility to live our best lives.

Particularly because of my own strong desire to run my own show business-wise, I should also mention that medical coding and billing are areas that you can create a work from home situation easily in. A great deal of coding and billing is done by individuals who are running their own small business from home. Again, this is great for moms because you can choose your hours, seek out more clients or fewer, and even decide to run your own outsourcing business where you handle a LOT of billing or coding for a wide range of medical providers.

On this site, I am making every effort to give you the full picture of a medical reimbursement job so that you can decide whether to pursue this field or not. At times I will recommend resources that can help you further your skills. Other times I will simply be fleshing out individual details to paint a clearer picture of the field as a whole. And at all times, I am your dedicated coach who will be bringing you useful information about medical billing and coding careers to help you live your best life!