THE BASICS

Medical coding is pretty simple really. Just imagine that you could assign certain alphanumeric digits for  every disease, disorder, ailment, medical complaint, or condition to designate diagnosis, as well as represent every procedure doctors use to designate treatment for those diseases and you would be a coder.   That, essentially, is what medical coding is all about. It's the translation of medical information and treatment into standardized codes.

What purpose does this codification serve? 

Good question, we thought you'd never ask! Well, one of the primary benefits of using codes to describe what might otherwise be pages upon pages of information related to patient problems and their various treatments.  With over 1.2 billion patient visits annually for medical care, 6 billion related bits of information have to be processed for payment and statistical capture and projection.  Coding provides uniform documentation to allow all of the people and processes to use it 

So, how does the process really work? Well, it all starts in the provider's office. At the encounter, the provider does the exam, listens and probes and taps and draws, and figures out what's wrong. He dictates or inputs the patient data into an electronic record, which is often transcribed by medical transcriptionists (training we also have done for 40 years). The coder takes that record and determines the codes for the services performed (CPT Codes - Current Procedural Terminology) and the diagnosis (ICD Codes - International Classification of Diseases).

How difficult is it? 

First you have to learn the language - medical terminology.  Then you alphabetically look up the diagnoses and treatments and select the appropriate codes to best describe the encounter.  First we teach you about the codes themselves and then you code about 600 actual patient charts which is where you really learn to code.  The skills acquired are equivalent to 6 months to a year of practical in-office experience.

Meditech has been in the Medical Coding business since the late 1970s, and was one of the very first companies in the United States to begin offering medical coding training courses online via the Web in 1994. 

Learn at home and save a couple of years time.  With this program you learn at home at your own pace and it rarely takes more than 6 months!  Becoming a medical coder does not require an advanced college degree, nor does it require an enormous investment – sometimes as much as $6000 at a brick and mortar school.  Plan to certify as a coder when the training is complete.  We’ll help you plan for that as well.

Meditech knows how to train and the track record proves it.  

While you’re thinking about it, consider adding billing to your coding course; the combination of talent is very marketable.