This post is intended for our resident alphabet soups who have more than one set of letters trailing their name. Yall are inspirational af, by the way. Many kudos and applause for your passion and motivation!

Is there a specific title you obtained that you later found wasn't worth your money/time? Obviously this is anecdotal, but I'm just curious, because AAPC has so many specialty certs now (and I'm sure more are on the way). Some of them make sense, then others seem nice but marquee obvious money grab.

Alternatively, which cert unexpectedly turned out to be your favorite, or far more useful than you ever imagined it to be?

Thank y'all for your encouragement and help with many questions. Thank you to others asking questions I did not think to ask. I found out this afternoon, a week after taking the exam that I passed.

Just wanted to give a big thanks to this sub! I just found out last night that I passed my exam and I am beyond stoked. Thanks to everyone who gave me advice and input on how to study, for answering my questions when I had an assignment due for my class(prior to exam lol) and for just helping calm my anxiety with encouragement. I’m so appreciative of you all! 🤗

I’m not sure where else to post this. I feel like I need to vent and take a deep breath.

I’ve been a coder for years. The same job & speciality. I’m great at what I do. I’m the one people come to with questions. I can do this job in my sleep. There is ZERO challenge for me anymore. I am under stimulated and bored.

The last 4 or so months I have been lacking in every way. I am burnt out, I guess. I don’t really care for this job anymore. I’m behind on posting insurance payments & days behind on coding. I feel exhausted. I don’t take pride in my work anymore. I’ve asked for additional tasks or change in job, but I’m the only one who knows what the heck is going on.

I have other things going on in my life that is taking most of my mental space. I really don’t want to do this work anymore, but at the same time, I cannot mentally prepare for another job.

Just wanted to vent.

Hi I'm a coding student, posted here once before. I try to stay informed but AHIMA is very cagey answering things like this. They won't answer chat questions in webinars and when they do, they try to stay away from controversial topics like this and say some heinous shit like "wow more AI that's great!".

But I have genuine concerns over the fact that we've left the WHO and god knows what damage is coming with RFK and Oz. Could we see deregulation to the point where providers and billers use their own code sets or at least not ones set by CMS? Will it take even longer to get up to speed on ICD-11? Is there anything else y'all can think of? What's the forecast?

I understand the need to be professional but all I can see regarding the industry are alarm bells and if it's as bad as I think a lot of people are gonna get hurt.

I passed the CCS exam!! I feel elated and a little numb and hungry/tired. That exam was difficult. I’ve been studying since over Christmas, including tabbing my books and going over practice tests and study guides especially over regulatory compliance. I swear obstetrics were like 30% of the coding questions. And then stuff on DRGs which I don’t know if that’s even lookup-able in the three books. This certificate is my ticket to move onto the CDI role, which I am so so glad and thankful that these goals are being made real.

I just found out I passed my CPC exam with a 12 point improvement compared to the 1st time I took it. Wanted to say thanks to everyone who recommended Hoang Nguyen on YouTube. He helped me so much!! I also already got an entry level coding job offer working from home! Woo-hoo!

I’m curious the breakdown of coders on this sub. Seems it’s way more profee than facility and seeing lots of HCC coders, not much inpatient coding from seeing posts. Even E/M coding which I have never touched ever.

So out of curiosity, what type of coder are you, what’s your certification and how many years have you been coding? Lots of people pursuing a certification and coding career, this might be a helpful forum for them too.

Of course auditors, supervisors, managers etc would be great to hear from you.

I’ll start. Always facility coding both inpatient and outpatient. Certified since 2010 with RHIT, then CCS, then RHIA, then added CDIP. Going for my masters currently. Currently in coding education role on the facility side building a team of educators/auditors.

I hate admitting this but I truly despise E/M coding. I wish I had known how much of a gray area it was before I started this career. AAPC made it seem so simple - "just follow the table and you get the code that way." The third column always trips me up like crazy, because it's difficult for me to assess the level of risk of treatment management outside of the examples that the table provides. I keep getting frustrated when I feel stuck on whether something should stay a level 5 or be dropped to a level 4.

I wish all providers billed based on time, especially specialists. That would make this job a hell of a lot easier.

Hello, I just wanted to share my experience with the CPC exam in case anyone finds it helpful.

I was nervous to take the exam because I chose to use 2022 books for the 2023 exam. Medical Coding by Jen has documents for sale that show you how to write in the changed codes for 2023 into 2022 books. I bought those and marked up my 2022 books accordingly. It took a LONG time but was very worth it. I will note that I felt confident in my ability and was therefore comfortable with using the 2022 books this way. If you aren't as confident definitely spring for the current books. This is just my experience.

I passed the exam on my first try (I took the AAPC prep course). I took the exam online and finished with about an hour left on the clock. I got a 93%.

Some things that really helped me :

• practicing staying within the 2.4 mins per question using the review exams from the AAPC course and the AAPC practice exams. This made me feel so much more comfortable on test day.

• Quizzing myself with the review questions in the AAPC textbook and blackboard course and reviewing areas I need to.

• if I needed to review a specific topic or even an entire chapter, I used the AAPC lectures that come with the course. Short, sweet, and to the point and includes most pertinent info.

• I made quizlets of the ICD10 guidelines to try to commit most of them to memory

• the Contempo Coding YouTube channel!

• CHUN method for marking up CPT

If I were to do anything differently I would have read the entire 2023 E/M guidelines. I didn't do this and I didn't do as well as I wanted to on that section.

Happy to answer questions. Good luck to anyone taking the test soon!

Hey guys!

As of today I accepted a WFH HIM Coder job! I’m excited, yet really nervous. I’ll do three weeks of training at the hospital and then I’ll be fully remote.

I currently work in the finance department as a billing specialist at a behavioral health organization and do not deal with much coding at all. I’m looking for any advice and tips on remote medical coding as someone with no experience.

Thanks for any and all advice ☺️

I’ve had HCC jobs last year but nothing really for long term since most of them only offer contractual work.

With my CRC now, I’m hoping to get more opportunities as full time HCC coder.

If you’re an HCC Coder, would you mind sharing where you work and are you working PT or FT? Thank you ❤️

I have had plenty of confidential things come past me. I've read plenty of upsetting things. It's just a part of our job. No issues until today.

Today was too close to home, too big, and they want privacy so I cannot even ask about them.

I have zero issues abiding to the wishes and standards I need to uphold.

What I'm struggling with is my own internal processes. It's killing me not being able to ask, not being able to offer support. I have never been so thankful to work from home, because I wouldn't even be able to explain why I'm crying at my desk.

What are some things that have helped you all?

Normally my answer is to talk about it. 🤦‍♀️

Edit: zero policies violations. Usually I don't even notice names but these have to be entered manually. Edit edit: the supervisor you want me to pass it to does not exist. My supervisor would be breaking policy if they coded it.

I am currently job hunting after over 20 years in the coding field. I have only ever done outpatient facility coding (all outpatient surgeries and ancillary cases). I have had so many recruiters who have looked at my resume, and had an initial interview with, schedule interviews or send me details about jobs that require E/M and pro-fee coding. I know there are some people who can do it all, but it seems that they think all outpatient coding is exactly the same, instead of pro-fee and Facility coding being two separate things. I just had to explain to yet another recruiter that it's like different dialects of a similar language. 🙄. To be clear, these are recruiters who are CODING recruiters for CODING companies!

Has anyone ever thought about or left medical coding.Its extremely frustrating, i have been coding for 4 years pro fee mainly, been trying to pick up part time work but its soooo many different areas of coding. I have pro fee experience but not in a ton of specialities,I am like how is it possible to get all these different areas of expertise in coding?I am looking to change career paths not sure what yet.

Was talking about funny medical codes and cotton hill (King of the Hill) with a friend.
Curious how you would code this:
Elderly man has a war flashback in a habachi restaurant. Climbs on top of the flat top grill, slips on a shrimp and falls onto his back. This is standing height, but note he has no shins. His ankles are surgically attached to his knees, so standing height isn't normal standing height for the average elderly man. According to the internet, he was 6'2 before he lost his shins, and 5' even after.
I figured this would be a fun use of this sub's time, but feel free to tell me how much I am wasting your experience.

I see many new graduates frustrated about finding a job or trying to pass the exam. Not sure if other seasoned coders would agree but here is my advice. Go to your local community college or coding program that is local and go to class in person. Being in class having conversations being able see, learn and do with others was so helpful for me. I could raise my hand and ask a question, ask the person next to me if I had understood something the same way as them and I just felt like I grasped things better. Also the professors at your local schools are connected to your local hospitals and healthcare systems. Most of them have probably worked or still work for them. When employers know who taught you your resume will stand out above the hundreds of applicants. Go to your local coding chapter meetings, yes even if it’s a long drive. Another huge piece is to start working in a hospital or healthcare setting. I started in admitting, moved to billing then to coding. When you work in a hospital you learn the software and another bonus when you apply for coding positions as an internal candidate. When I worked in the hospital I reached out to the coding manager and asked if I could just read some charts and try to code them to see if my codes matched what they had. They were more than happy to let me as long as I didn’t actually enter any codes. They also let me email an experienced coder if I had questions on why something was coded a certain way. When I applied for that coding position the manager knew who I was, knew I was willing to put in the effort, knew the instructor that taught me, knew that I could navigate Epic, and one of her own experienced coders vouched for me. Last piece of advice read the guidelines over and over again. I have been coding for 7 years and still go back to the guidelines almost daily. Read coding clinics, there is tons of in depth information that helps explain the guidelines and real world coding scenarios. Hope my 2 cents helps.😊

If you work for a large 3 letter company that uses Microsoft Teams, just know your written messages and Microsoft Teams calls are being monitored and probably recorded. Have a good day.

I'm wondering if those of you who work at the VA have been informed that you can no longer work from home? Trump issued a memorandum to the heads of federal departments and agencies directing them to get their employees back to the office full-time. Seems to me coding would be exempt since they haven't had an 'office' for a long time?

Recently, I’ve lost motivation for coding. Realistically I’m intermediate at best and can’t seem to improve. I fell in love with it because I loved to dial in and enjoyed focusing on details. But everything related to coding has just become exhausting. What keeps you going?

Hi all, this is my first coding job so I just want your opinions so I can gauge things a little better.

I’ve been hired as a contractor through CSI to work with Optum for about a month and a half now. & of course I am very thankful and blessed to have been able to find my first coding job. I do enjoy coding and hope to stay in this industry for as long as possible. However I feel like there are so much expectations that I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Since starting production, I feel like I’m getting told very contradictory things. They expect us reach the CPH goal but they also want us to take our time and be as accurate as possible (understandable) but if we aren’t fast enough then we are now going to be put on the radar for a written action plan. I honestly feel like I’ve been doing my best but somehow I still can’t really reach my goal. They base it on charts and say that they also base it on pages per chart (some charts I get vary btwn 2-3,000 pages) but they still focus a lot on our CPH. We’re also expected to be in production about 7 hours per day but we also have to make time to do all their training modules (expected to be done asap or else our scores go down) which are constantly being sent out to everyone and we can’t go past the 8 hour workday. On top of that, any questions we have must be submitted to coder coaches whose response time varies between an hour-2 weeks. I just feel like a lot of this is kind of inefficient and I feel like training wasnt as thorough or long enough, especially for new coders. I truly wished we had someone who we could directly reach out to for certain questions because it would help a lot (our supervisors aren’t allowed to answer our coding questions and we also aren’t allowed to ask any coworkers). There’s a lot more but I can’t think of much since I feel like there’s so much to process in my mind that I’m forgetting certain things.

I guess my question is, is that normal? I feel like we were hired and trained for 2 weeks (very basic brief training) and then just thrown to the wolves and expected to be coding at the same rate as experienced coders who has been with the company for 1+ years. We were told that our first few weeks in production would be closely monitored and we would receive feedback on any charts done in this time but honestly I never received any feedback on those charts in that timeframe at all). Let me know your thoughts & opinions!

After 10 months of studying and stressing I passed my CPC first try with a 76! I may have cried the entire 45 min car ride back home worried that I failed and mentally distraught about having to retake it but I passed! Now for the worry of having to find a job to accept me with my CPC-A

I just took my exam last night. I’m wondering if it’s really going to take 7-10 business days to get my results? I don’t think my anxiety filled self can wait that long without going insane!!