Steps to Earning a Medical Coding Degree

 

So, your thinking about acquiring a medical coding certification. What are the correct steps to complete your goal? It is always best to enroll in a community college or university program. Many correspondence (post secondary) schools offer a transfer guarantee, but due to their accreditation level, many regional community colleges and universities will not accept their credits.

It important for you to ask questions on the above mentioned items, but also do your homework and check with the accrediting organization to see if enrolling in the program is a plus or negative. Students who failed to research find out on the back-end, the dedication and time they spent to obtain a degree is worthless. Enrollment in a traditional community college and university is far less expensive than many of the advertised correspondence schools now seen popping up everywhere these days.

Counseling

Before you finalize your decision, you should always speak to an advisor. But, be careful. Counseling should not sound like a sales pitch. Your advising session should discuss your goals, the courses, the school's program and then the costs.

Verification

The United States Department of Education website offers an accreditation database. Here you can type in the name of the school along with their location and see the accreditation level. Some additional schools like school of law, school of nursing, etc. will may have their own separate accreditation in addition to the campus accreditation. If the campus information is not in their database, then do not enroll.

If you are deciding to do an online program, the accreditation for distance learning is governed by the Distance Education Training Council (DTEC).  If you plan to attend a post secondary school which covers many correspondence schools, verify on this website link.

Curriculum

Many medical coding course programs should offer a curriculum in medical terminology, human anatomy and physiology, legal and ethics, pharmacology, inpatient and outpatient coding, and some additional billing and computer courses.

Fees

A community college program will take between 1 to 2 years (based on a certificate or associate degree) and cost between $2000.00 to $4000.00. A university program will be higher. Remember the fee is based on the schools fee per credit hour or the type of course. For instance , a medical terminology class at a community college could have a fee of $200.00 for 3 credits where a university may charge $400.00 per credit hour for 3 credit course.

Once you completed the above steps its time to decide which medical coding certification is right for you. Remember to check with the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA)  for the Certified Coding Specialist (CCS), Certified Coding Specialist-Physician (CCS-P), Registered Health Information Administrator (RHIA) and Registered Health Information Technician (RHIT) certications. The American Academy of Professional Coders delegates the Certified Professional Coder (CPC) and the Certified Outpatient Coder(COC) certification.