How Can I Grow My Career as a Medical Biller and Coder?

The healthcare industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States, with no signs of slowing down. Industry growth combined with the ongoing move to electronic medical records puts the medical coding career path on a fast track for completion. It usually takes less than a year to complete entry-level training and land that first job in a new medical coding career.

What is a Medical Biller and Coder?

The medical biller and coder plays a crucial role across all aspects of the healthcare industry. Without this role, the healthcare industry would grind to a halt! Medical billers and coders use a special language to communicate with their industry. It’s a language of numbers and acronyms specially designed to help the industry arrange and categorize the thousands of service options available to patients. From equipment to specific treatments, everything has a code.

These codes and the cryptic acronyms let the management system know that something specific happened that requires billing. If a patient needs a few stitches – there’s a code for that. Medical coders help change procedures into billable hours so that those involved receive proper compensation and insurance companies are aware of what took place.

Medical Coding Career Growth

Entry-level medical coding provides the foundation for career advancement. Because medical coding teaches people how to talk about the payment side of medicine with computers, they have a starting point for learning about healthcare-focused information systems. Computers understand codes, not people. Thus, a medical coder is a translator between the computer and the caregiver.

Medical coders take the information healthcare providers record about their patients and turn it into codes. They need to know human physiology, anatomy, and details about treatments and procedures to ensure they’re reading the records correctly as they input data into a software system.

Advancing a Medical Coding Career

Learning the medical coding and billing profession opens doors to other aspects of the healthcare industry. For example, the change to digital records creates a need for clinical medical data specialists and medical audit specialists. Both roles require advanced degrees in the intersection of healthcare records and computers.

A clinical medical data specialist is an IT professional focused on healthcare data. This role is important in protecting patients’ private data in their medical records. Digital information privacy is taken very seriously in the healthcare industry.

A medical auditing specialist is similar to an accountant but focused on healthcare businesses and the correct use of medical codes. Just a single digit recorded in error can cost a healthcare provider thousands of dollars. This role looks at the revenue streams and ensures everything is in order. An auditor can only do their job by knowing about medical coding and its corresponding policies and procedures.

Working as an entry level medical coder can lead you to bigger career opportunities within various healthcare organizations. Get registered now at FVI.

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Learn more:

• How Can I Grow My Career as a Medical Biller and Coder?
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  • How Can I Grow My Career as a Medical Biller and Coder?