Video Transcript

Host Question:
In your experience, what range of compensation does someone working in medical billing and coding stand to make? What’s expected entry level rates? And then what is the high end of further into your career you could strive for?

Guest Answer:
In the beginning, you could probably expect anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000, depending on your experience. And then definitely as you progress anywhere to $100,000 plus, it just really depends on how far you want to go with that.

Guest Answer:
When I started off at Kaiser, I only had one job prior to that, and that was only for about six months. And that job was for a federal health qualified Community Health. It was $18 bucks an hour as a coder. The billers were making probably about $15 an hour, which was still very good at that point. Kaiser like I said, Union scale started all of their builders and coders at $22 something an hour because it was Union scale. But if you’re in management, that it was a different pay rate. It was a salary. I’m seeing salaries in my area for qualified coders, certification years experience anywhere from $40,000 to $55,000 a year. If you do more than just coding, if you know billing, if, you know auditing, which is a terrific case and I have as well that goes way up, especially with auditors.

Guest Answer:
First off, if you want some accurate, detailed information about that, the American Association of professional coders wants a report that is organized by career level, by state. On how much money, you can expect to make in your job if you are brand new to billing and coding inexperience just finished getting certified, it’s likely that your hourly rate might be about the $20 mark. I wouldn’t go lower than that. Don’t let anybody pay you less than that. OK I would fight for you. OK if you’re trying to get less than that. But in the $40,000, $38 to $42 range, for a brand new person, somebody who has experience is looking at $50,000 to $70,000 somebody who has more advanced skills, maybe they have taken advanced training and coding or auditing or something. They can expect $78.

Guest Answer:
It’s definitely dependent on what certifications you want. Oh, well, just a certified professional coding, you know, certification. If they had A which apprentice that can be on the lower scale of the aspect, which could be like anywhere from maybe $15 to $17 an hour. And then the higher ranking where you’ve been at this for a while, depending on what you’ve done in the past at other jobs or even with that particular practice, what you’ve done in the time you’ve been in this field, it could range to $65 to $85 dollars per hour and a lot of it depends on how you work. So like with my company we have is that we’re depending on the job is how we based actual pay rate. For a low level employee that started just out now with the CPC-A. I, I would definitely want them a lower because their work has to be scrutinized. It definitely has to be reviewed prior to being approved.

Guest Answer:
When I started out right after I got my degree, I just wanted to get my foot in the door anywhere. And I got a job at a in-patient like drug and alcohol rehab place, and they paid me about $10 an hour. So that was really terrible. But it led to me getting a job at the local hospital because I just needed to show them I had some kind of experience. They hired me in for that $14 an hour and I had about six months of experience at that time, so not even that much experience. And it was a large pay increase at that time. Now, where I currently work, if you have a certification of some type, they start out about $18 an hour. And I would say I’m kind of at the Senior level of the pay and I’m making about $28 right now and the top out pay is $35.

Video Transcript

Host Question:
Do people working in medical billing and coding typically get paid hourly by salary? Any sort of performance based? How does the compensation usually work?

Medical Biller and Coder Answer:
It’s usually by our hourly. It’s pretty industry wide to be hourly. If you are like a floating manager or supervisor, then that might be a salary type thing. I see mostly an hourly salary. People who go into billing. Some jobs will give you incentive bonuses based on your benchmarks. So you were supposed to bring in $1,000,000 this month and you brought in $1.1 million. You might get a piece of that extra $100,000. So things like that project work? Yes, I do see a lot of project work compensation also by projects, but I would say that’s a minority of the percentage of jobs out there. If you’re working for a doctor’s office, depending on the specialty. So if you worked for a plastic surgeon, that’s mostly cash only because it’s all. Insurance doesn’t cover most plastic surgery unless it’s medically necessary. There’s usually bonuses involved in that. Or anesthesia is another specialty effort where you guys collect the air, you get a quarterly bonus if you make your numbers, and they usually start off at a higher hourly rate.

Medical Biller and Coder Answer:
When you’re working for like Kaiser, it’s because I worked for them for a number of years. Their union, you’re kind of stuck at Union scale. I’ve seen a lot of it hourly because a lot of those employees, although they are very valuable, they’re not high ranking. And so they’re not like managers or supervisors. So they’re typically on a scale of just hourly days, but then it could be as well where some practices and companies, they compensate their medical bills and coders as well with bonuses or commissions where you’re commission, you have to, you know, 50 times out the door every day. And then there could be some $150 or $100 bonus of the actual biller. So it’s very broad. It depends. A lot of in-house billers do get paid. Hourly billing and coding companies may also pay hourly or salary. It just depends on what level you’re at and what position you hold. Freelancers and private contractors can get paid either a flat rate or a percentage, and that’s just going to depend on what their negotiated contract is.