Video Transcript

Host Question:
Is it hard to find jobs right now in medical billing and coding?

Guest Answer:
For me, it was hard to find a job in the field at first with that experience. But that’s like a lot of first jobs any time you’re in a new field. The thing that I found, it’s just best to keep trying until you find someone who’s willing to take the time to train you.

Guest Answer:
Actually at this time, it’s not a lot of people have trouble finding a job with the pay that they wanted. But this is fairly the job, which is always the best trouble for anyone that’s looking for a job. It’s like you want more pay, but it’s not really hard to find a job because it’s so many different providers and types and they’re now recognizing a lot of the holistic and things of that nature. So it’s finding your needs and being the best.

Guest Answer:
As a biller, you can come in off the street, but they usually want some kind of experience coding. They want a certification and experience, if you got it. This is a great tip for people. If you’re looking for a job and you’ve never done this, this is your first time applying, tell them I don’t come with any bad habits. Every company has their own way of doing things. Every hospital group, every physician’s group, private practice, whatever. So working in one company for a long time, you learn their process, but you go somewhere, ask, “well, wait a minute, that’s not what I’m used to.” Sometimes it’s good being the new guy.

Guest Answer:
One of the things that all the students come to me, especially if they have no background in billing and coding, no health care background. They come in, they say, I want to learn this billing and coding. But every time I look at a job listing, it says they want three years experience. Two years experience. Well, let me tell you that a very good percentage of the students that I’ve had, they leave before they’re even certified yet with a job lined up. So is it possible? Yes, it is possible. Do you have to learn your skill? Do you have to be able to sell yourself at first? Yes can you do it? Yes and I am a big advocate of not being afraid of all those ads that say two years, three years, et cetera. They are looking for serious people. Are there jobs out there? Tons, tons of jobs.

Guest Answer:
It is hard to get into the medical coding field because there are so many remote coding jobs right now. Everybody wants remote coding as well. I currently work in the office setting. I go to work every day and I am looking to branch out into the remote coding world. But the remote coding industry doesn’t want someone with no coding experience. So it is important to try to get your foot in the door, it in the office facility type coding place first, get you some experience and then go for those remote jobs. There’s so much more opportunity with those. They normally pay better also, but they are harder to get if you don’t have experience.

Video Transcript

Host Question:
What is something that you do not love about working in medical billing and coding?

Guest Answer:
There’s a lot of rules and they’re always changing. One of the things that annoys me about colleagues in the industry is that because, you know, it’s very specialized, there’s a lot of learning involved. So people think, OK, I know this now. And so they get a little arrogant about it, a little arrogant about knowing this or knowing certain kinds of codes and things like that, only to find out that two months, six months, a year later, it’s different. So there’s always got to be learning. You have to stay on top of things. And that learning comes from many, many different areas insurance companies, the government, the coding manuals, the AMA, et cetera and so on. So you constantly have to be watching out and you have to constantly be assessing whether the information that you’re getting is valid fact or an opinion of the fact.

Guest Answer:
I like it to be, you know, Black and white, like this is it and this is why. But then sometimes we use a neurosurgical companion for our coding in a one page. It may say you should do something this way. And then on the other page it may say, but not in this instance. You know, there’s so many different scenarios that there is a gray area and you can butt heads with your co-workers over not thinking is the same answer.

Guest Answer:
The overall politics in our nation when it comes to health care. I hate it. Absolutely hate it. So like each insurance company has their own ways of wanting their documentation sent to them and they make it difficult. If everybody followed Medicare’s way of doing things, which is kind of how I look at it. They’d all be getting paid the same, and there really wouldn’t be any question. But when you got one person saying, “hey, well, we’ve got our own set of codes for that,” or I don’t call anybody out. There’s one insurance company. They have their own set of codes for things and they don’t automatically flip it on their side. I, as the biller need to know that I need to send it over correctly. Telehealth is a nightmare right now because Medicare really try to set down some standards. But then the insurance companies, “Well, no, we want to get it this way. No, we want it that way.” And it’s just like, why don’t you just all do it the same way and be done with it?

Guest Answer:
What I don’t love about it is that for me to be honest, is kind of hard to work out there like work life balance. I’m still trying to master that. So I don’t work myself down so hard. Like, just have to have. That means.

Guest Answer:
Honestly, there isn’t too much that I don’t love about medical billing and coding. The biggest thing for me is making sure I’m in a good work environment.

Video Transcript

Host Question:
What career skills do you think you need to be successful in the world of medical billing and coding?

Guest Answer:
You have to be curious. You have to be like Sherlock Holmes. And if you like jigsaw puzzles or if you like puzzles of any kind, that kind of thing. That’s all very helpful stuff because you have a natural mind for curiosity and for solving things, seeing patterns. You want to be able to look at that overall documentation. The other thing is you have to come in to the job in the right mindset that you are a partner with the provider. For most of us, some people work on the insurance side, but when you’re working on the provider side, you want to partner with that provider and you want to be able to. You’ll start seeing trends in how they do their notes.

Guest Answer:
You need to be an organized and focused person. You have to be willing to read and learn on a regular basis. This isn’t something that you learn. And then you’re like, you know, for the rest of your life, you constantly learning. You also have to be able to communicate with all kinds of people on all levels of your team, your patients who may know nothing about medical billing and coding your counterparts and colleagues and your health care providers. So we’re talking on a different level, on a more scientific level about medicine. You have to be able to understand the medical terminology and be able to read all that medical documentation, have an idea of what it says. Then you have to be able to make the translation and understand the technical manuals, which are what medical coding is. Essentially understanding the translation between that medical terminology and the technical manuals of coding. The rules and regulations that are associated with that. You have to understand medical insurance. The health care insurance industry makes the rules about not whether your patient can have a procedure done, but whether the insurance company’s going to pay for the procedure to be done. So you have to understand how they are working, and then you have to also understand the technology of creating a claim, transmitting it, because that’s now 95% done electronically. And then you have to have some accounting knowledge to be able to understand whether the money’s right, how to apply it to patients accounts and do a count reporting.

Guest Answer:
Time management is going to be a big one. Prioritization and attention to detail. This is a very detail oriented career field, so that’s going to be a big one. But don’t worry if you feel like these aren’t your strong suits because all of these things can be learned.

Guest Answer:
You definitely want to be friendly, nice to the providers. You want to have their rapport and their relationship with the clients as well. You want to be as courteous as you can to the actual letter, which like would be the insurance companies like Mr Manning’s that are. But you need that because in this one of business. Our patients and our occupation of health care. It’s not always the greatest means that they risk. So you always want to give them a little bit of light and shine bright for anyone that crosses your path.

Guest Answer:
You need a strong backbone. You need to be able to give and take constructive criticism. You need to know what you’re talking about and not be afraid of doctors. You cannot have, like, white coat syndrome, you know. You have to go talk to them and say, “hey, did you really do this? Because this does not look like you did what you were telling me you did at all.” And you have to have an assertive personality, can’t be passive, and then you don’t want to come off too strong and ruffle everybody’s feathers up.

Video Transcript

Host Question:
Are Medical Billing and Coding Degrees and Certificates offered via online education?

Medical Billing and Coding Expert Answer:
At this point, yes, they are the companies that I named in HK, the HTC, AMA, AHIMA. All of those certifications are now online. You don’t have to go the route of a typical classroom. You can definitely take the route of just online learning at your own pace. But you still have to stay on track with the courses so that you meet the requirements.

Medical Billing and Coding Expert Answer:
I’ve done both. I’ve taught both. And hybrid. So if you had asked me this a year ago, I would have had a different answer. I would have said in-person education is better because you have that relationship. And for as a teacher, I could see people’s facial expression and body language, like when they’ve had it with me and they don’t get me or when they do get me. I thought that was going to be richer in person. But I teach a lot of programs online, and I learn that it’s really dependent on the student. If you’re engaged online, if you can do online, if you can be in a program where you’re alive with an instructor, then you’re going to have a rich experience because, number one, you want it. And number two, you have someone who’s open to you and have that rapport as a society will learning the benefits of both. So I think you can get a rich experience depending on who you are and what you need.

Medical Billing and Coding Expert Answer:
Yes, there’s a lot of programs at every degree level that you can do online when picking a program. Or course, I would just suggest to pick whatever fits your schedule best or whatever is best for you. An advantage to doing it online would be if you want to move to a remote position, it kind of gives you a taste of how you’re going to have to structure your day in order to make sure you’re meeting, you know, deadlines and things like that. As far as a disadvantage for either one, I don’t think there’s a disadvantage for either one. I think that’s totally going to depend on your learning style. A lot of people learn better in person where they can see someone and ask questions, where other people, they just do better when they can just read it and go at their own pace. I

Medical Billing and Coding Expert Answer:
really think that you should be in the classroom standing to start out learning how to maneuver the books for the diagnosis and the procedures with the ICD-10 and the CBT books. It’s a new experience is something totally different. There’s different types of sections in the books that you need to learn how to look up. It might be an alphabetic type index or a numeric or an alphanumeric. So it’s really good to be in the classroom setting to learn how to use those books. And then on the flip side, it’s great to do remote school your home. You can do it on your own time kind of thing.

Video Transcript

Host Question:
How much of the skills that you use in your career do you learn in the educational journey versus how much are you learning on the job?

Medical Biller and Coder Answer:
Some people come into my classes and they say, do I really need this class because my friend does this? And she didn’t even go to school. Or my mother used to do this. And she didn’t go to school for it. She just got a job in a doctor’s office. And yes, that could be true. And we all in the world, in the professional world, there is a benefit to networking and knowing people. And so, yes, that could be true. However, they don’t understand all of the skills that I talked about when we first started. Those people don’t know those skills. So they’re going to make a lot of mistakes and they’re always going to be behind the eight ball saying, oh, well, I figured this piece out, but I don’t know how it applies there and I don’t really know what that code means. I do know what that one means. So they’re always going to be behind. They’re always going to be faltering. Unless they go and fulfill their commitment to their new career and get educated, they’re always going to have a hard time and God forbid, they should try to get a different job.

Medical Biller and Coder Answer:
I say some of the skills I got from my local college terminology very important anatomy and physiology. And then I’m not a computer guy. Right but taking the Microsoft package for access for Excel as a coder and a builder, you will use Excel on a daily basis. There’s benefits to going through a two year program with a local college, but if you don’t have that kind of time or you’re working a full time job and you’re trying to get that certification to get a raise, go to amba, go to APC or a hema, and they have those courses available for you online. Also in the American Academy of coding professionals. They’ve been around for a few years and they have HCC training. You cannot touch an HCC training program for less than two grants.

Medical Biller and Coder Answer:
I would say I’ve learned a large amount in my educational journey, maybe like 80 to 90%, and then the rest of that percentage is going to be kind of sporadic and voluntary. It changes, it’s volatile to where you’re going to work. So we might be coding things at the current office, like I’ve never coded anything before, and then at the hospital they may have a different set of rules and that kind of thing. At the hospital, we didn’t care about insurance. So much. That was wasn’t such a big topic. I need to code it this way for Medicare. I need to go to this way for contrast. It wasn’t such a big ordeal.

Medical Biller and Coder Answer:
I would say it’s probably like a 70/30 split where you are because what I learned from the actual courses, the, you know, the actual education portion of it. Then the third is how as my practice and how different practice is, I work with children. So if it’s literally like this provider’s office doesn’t exist, but then I have a provider’s office, they don’t handle these and this is how they want it handled. Then that’s where the slate comes in. And so I feel like it’s more of my education a lot of the time, and then it’s just being in this career mode for so long in this dream where I’m no help here and I know what works. So I try to educate my provider and the practices. So now even more.

Medical Biller and Coder Answer:
I’m a hands on learner. It definitely clicked a lot better for me when I was on the job and when I was doing it, I got a lot of base of the basics and the terminology and familiarity, the terms that everyone was using around me through the courses that I took. But when I was on the job and actually doing it is when it really started to stick.

Video Transcript

Host Question:
What are ICD-10, CPT and HSPCS level two, and do you need to know all three of those you do?

Medical Biller and Coder Answer:
ICD-10 stands for International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision, clinical modification, it is all the reasons why a person will go to a doctor. So when you’re trying to get money out of the insurance companies, you have to tell them why the person came to you. What’s wrong with them? Even if it’s they just came for a screening, you still have to say why the person came. So that’s why those codes. CPT Current Procedural Terminology, those are the codes that say what you did for the person. You gave them a shot, you gave them an exam, you gave them a surgery, you gave them a physical therapy treatment. What do you want to get paid for? Those are those codes. They’re attached largely to the money, the HSPCS-2 codes. They’re kind of like the miscellaneous category there is in there. There’s the ambulance rides, the wheelchairs, the codes that are in the other two books, know, the other procedure book that somebody forgot to put in there because whatever, there are certain codes where some insurance companies prefer you to use those level two codes. So they’re kind of like the miscellaneous book you need to know those two, especially depending on what kind of practice of medicine you work in.

Medical Biller and Coder Answer:
These are like big, gigantic library reference books. If you take them like that, they’re updated every year. This is a CPT book. Here’s what this is. So these are all the different codes that have money attached to them. So procedures. So CBT is Current Procedural Terminology. Then you have the ICD-10 book and that’s International Classification of diseases. And that’s kind of like my thing because there’s this very special area of coding called HCC coding that’s attached to ICD tats and that’s a Medicare product and all the insurances have their own form of it. It’s a way of being paid off of the diagnoses. So we’re looking at patients that have a number of issues like their diabetic congestive heart failure. There you’ve got kidney issues, gout and whatever else. So the doctor is using a lot of medical decision making skills on how to take care of this patient.

Host Question:
What are ICD-10 CRM, CBT and CPCS level two and do you need to know all three of those?

Medical Biller and Coder Answer:
The ICD-10 is the diagnosis codes. That’s what we use to say. Why someone is seeing a provider for whatever reason. CBT and the hex fix level two codes are actually part of the same animal. So CBT or HCPCS level one. So those are the same thing, are used for eval management, diagnostic testing and also for surgeries. Whereas the HSPCS level two are used mostly for medical devices, medical supplies and dental codes. And then there’s some other categories there that go for HSPCS-2. And yes, he would want to know all three or at least have some familiarity with all three for this career field. But they do teach you that. And all of the certifications, all of the classes, it’s like a major part of the learning process.

Medical Biller and Coder Answer:
You have some practices that are coming now where they may only do a portion and you need to know all of those. I think you’re always going to have to know because any practice that you work in, that’s what’s going to be used. ICD-10 code, which is the actual diagnosis code for a patient. So if the provider of the patient has hypertension, you have to make sure that everything that’s listed on that particular, you know, in that documentation from the provider links back to those calls or if it’s hypertension or common cold, any of that. We have to make sure that the medication, all of that works with those carriers. If it is a patient for the billing side of them, like the CBC, our biller may not necessarily have to know specifically, but they will learn as they’re looking at codes but like modifiers to be added, you know, by the coding team. So that’s just the even more in-depth look at like the modifier is giving you more details on that. Beeping see how the Current Procedural Terminology from the provider is. Well, if the diagnosis codes.

Medical Biller and Coder Answer:
We are using all of them today. But my experience, I have not used the HSPCS code. Those are more like a project type thing, like we would use them for a new type of interbody disk that we’re trying out, like experimental type codes. And then your ICD-10 is diagnosis codes. Your ICD-10 CM is more inpatient procedure coding, and then CPT is going to be your outpatient procedure coding.