Congratulations! You have finished medical billing and coding school, landed a medical billing or coding job and are about to embark on your new career. You may be wondering what to expect during your first few days. Will the new employer expect you to jump right in and start sending claims? What kind of on-the-job training might you expect? Is your education going to be up to the challenge? Although the first few days at a medical billing and coding job will vary by employer, there are a few things you can expect with any job.

Orientation for Medical Billing and Coding Jobs

In a corporate facility or hospital, you may spend the first day in orientation. This will include meeting with human resources or another representative to hear about company policies, benefits and basic rules. You will probably be provided with a tour of the building, meet a few key people and see where you will be working. Some companies use this time to hold a meet and greet with supervisors and new staff. This could be as simple as refreshments in the afternoon while managers step in to introduce themselves, or as lavish as lunch with your new management team. One thing you should keep in mind during orientation is that no one expects you to remember all the things you learn or all the people you meet. You should take good notes and keep any handouts provided for later reference.

New Hire Training

No matter how much education and experience you have, if you land a billing or coding job with a major corporation or hospital, you may have to go through new hire training classes. These are often in addition to orientation. New hire training may be provided by a training department or by specialists in the billing department. It usually includes some time in a classroom reviewing materials, and some time working hands-on with billing or coding software. The time for new hire training varies from a few days to several weeks, depending on the employer. During this time, you will likely be provided with numerous handouts, Power Point presentations and information packets. The best training programs distill much of the information provided into cheat sheets for easy reference once you are completing actual work. Smaller offices and consulting businesses will likely skip formal new hire training and jump directly into job shadowing and on-the-job learning.

Job Shadowing

Job shadowing is a one-on-one buddy system for training. It usually involves a newly hired medical biller or coder sitting with an experienced representative. The experienced employee performs daily tasks as they normally would, but explains each step to the new hire. After explaining steps several times, the employee might switch places and allow the newly hired individual to complete the work under direct supervision. Job shadowing is a great way to introduce people to new software programs for billing and coding without the possibilities of numerous errors in the work.

Learn as you Go

Once official training is complete, most employers still do not expect medical billers and coders to be perfect. Companies usually assume a learning curve of several weeks to several months. They do not expect employees inside of the curve to hit production goals or have perfect quality without coaching. During this time, do not be discouraged if your work is reviewed on a regular basis and your supervisor gives you corrections or tips for future work. During this time, you should accept any information offered and seek to increase the accuracy and quantity of your work to reach goals. Before you know it, you will be an old hand at the billing and coding procedures for your employer, and it may be you sitting with new employees and providing training.

Many people new to the medical billing and coding industry believe these two functions are the same thing. In reality, many companies treat the jobs separately, although the skills sets are closely related. This article provides a detailed description of each function and a brief overview about what sort of job opportunities are available to individuals with medical billing and coding experience.

Medical Billing

Medical billing refers to the work completed by a provider of healthcare services in order to receive payment by insurance companies and patients. Often, this is referred to as claims adjudication. Although details within the process for each provider or treatment type vary, the basic premise for billing remains the same throughout the industry. This means someone with medical billing education or experience can adapt their knowledge to a growing variety of job opportunities.

Medical billing work consists of the creation, transmission and follow up of insurance claims and patient statements. Depending on where an individual works, daily functions performed in the scope of a claims billing job might include:

• Preparing electronic or paper claims
• Data entry
• Reviewing claims to ensure quality
• Checking medical records to ensure documentation requirements are met
• Calling insurance companies or physician’s offices to clarify information
• Entering claims online
• Checking claims status online or via telephone
• Following up on non-paid claims
• Speaking to patients regarding information for claims
• Following up with patients on outstanding invoices
• Re-filing claims

Small providers and offices usually have one or two staff members who complete all billing work while hospitals and large providers have entire departments dedicated to this task. There is usually more room for moving up with a larger provider, but smaller offices allow for diversity of work.

Medical Coding

Medical coding is the process of using an alphanumeric coding system to indicate procedures and diagnosis in a patient’s medical records. These codes are used to standardize medical communications for clarity among practitioners, as well as to transmit information to insurance companies for payments. Proper coding is essential in today’s technologically advanced health care environment. The diagnosis, procedure and medication codes are entered into systems at hospitals. The system uses the codes to ensure medications will not interact negatively with each other or the patient. Coding also ensures that procedures ordered are applicable to the diagnosed condition. Failure to property code items can result in improper care and injury to the patient.
Accurate coding is also required for payment of claims. For example, if a claim is submitted with a gender of male and the diagnosis code is related to pregnancy, the claim will not go through. Similarly, claims with procedure codes that are not deemed relevant to the diagnosis will be denied.

Medical coding is closely related to medical billing. In some offices, the same person performs the functions. In hospitals and large facilities, there are often separate medical records departments that employ coding experts.

Medical Billing and Coding Job Opportunities

Health care administration is one of the fastest growing careers in the country. As insurance companies attempt to save costs, accurate and efficient claims filing processes grow in importance for all providers. Someone with education or experience in medical billing and coding can expect to find job opportunities in hospitals, physical therapy clinics, physician’s offices, optometry and dental offices, rehabilitation facilities, nursing homes and off-site medical consulting firms. Medical billing clerks make an average of $22,000 to $32,000 per year in the United States. Certified medical records and coding experts can make up to $50,000 per year on average.

One of the most important things any medical biller or coder should be aware of is regulations regarding the industry. Laws that govern the healthcare industry can come from the federal, state or local level. In addition to legal issues, billers and coders must also deal with rules imposed by payers, accreditation agencies and their own employer. The volume of regulations can make anyone’s head spin, but it is important to follow all laws. After all, no one really looks good in an orange jump suit!

Although it is unlikely someone in a billing or coding career would ever be arrested due to actions on the job, failure to follow rules and regulations can result in financial loss for the company and in loss of your job. Here are some tips to ensuring compliance at all times in your medical billing or coding career.

Know the Big Rules

No one can remember all compliance rules in a medical job, but everyone should commit a few of the biggest to memory. The most important rules in each organization should be provided during orientation or training, but here are a few that are universal to healthcare.

• Health information is private. You cannot share any information that could identify a patient with any other entity without the express written permission of the patient. This means that if your adult cousin is a patient and you bill her claim, you cannot discuss the information with your aunt. In fact, you should probably not even discuss the information with your cousin, as you are not her healthcare provider.
• Health information is need-to-know. You should not discuss information within your organization unless there is a productive reason for the exchange.
• Passwords are unique to you. You should never share log on information for any program you use at work, and should not write passwords down.
• Claims should accurately reflect services rendered. Falsifying claims to increase the amount of collections is a federal offense.
• The portion of any charge that is the patient’s responsibility usually cannot be waived without an attempt at collection or documentation of indigence.

Use Available Resources

If you are working for a large company or hospital, you likely have access to legal, compliance and knowledge management departments. Most of these departments have open door policies, help lines, email addresses and anonymous communication lines. Any time you are in doubt regarding the compliance of an action, you should check with these resources. You should not break chain of command, however. When searching for an answer to any medical billing or coding question, there is a process to follow. You should:

1. Check your training materials and notes
2. Check with your supervisor or trainer
3. Check with your manager
4. Check with a compliance contact that can elevate the question if no one can provide an answer

Take Accountability for Your Work

You should never complete any task that you believe to be against the law. If your supervisor or manager has directed you to complete such a task, you should ask to speak to them in private. Calmly provide them with an explanation regarding why you think the task is illegal or questionable. Sometimes, you may be misunderstanding the work, and they can offer guidance. If they cannot provide a satisfactory explanation on how the work does not break any rules or regulations and they insist you complete the task anyway, you should contact the compliance helpline for assistance. Most companies have a no-retaliation policy to protect employees who bring up compliance concerns of this nature. However, in very rare circumstances, you may have to make a choice between keeping your job and abiding by your ethics. In these cases, it is usually better to seek employment in another facility that will not ask you to break rules.

All the different medical insurance billing and coding salaries is dependent upon several factors such as one’s instructional training course, work expertise and the particular location where the first is positioned. An experienced and licensed billing and coding professional who may have enough career expertise will probably generate over an expert that has not too long ago set out on the profession.

Alternatively, the particular location might not create a large amount of variation for that one who operates on the internet like a professional given that he could be prone to obtain consumers not merely all on the region yet from all of around the globe too. In terms of instructional certification are involved, the actual variables of medical insurance billing and coding salaries can vary greatly from firm to a new because even though some organizations might be content with a web-based diploma other people may possibly require for expert.

Medical Insurance Billing Salaries

The actual medical insurance billing salaries may be increased in several methods and in connection with this it is important to a good in-depth knowing concerning the elements that get a new level of remuneration attained through someone.

A significant consider this particular consider may be the dimension and the character with the firm given that the first is more likely to make much more simply by your Authorities medical center or even a an elderly care facility in comparison with a tiny insurance organization or even a personal health-related center. Also, deciding to be employed in a town together with increased requirements of just living typically requires increased medical insurance billing and coding salaries when compared with building province.

Possessing effectively gone through a certified training course from your respected school or even a college, you are prone to safe job using a higher level of revenue and the quantity of instruction and function expertise purchased inside the work would end up being a good thing to aid someone to ascend the particular steps with regards to placement also income.

Medical Insurance Coding Salaries

The particular medical insurance coding salaries tend to be without doubt large regarding experts who’ve obtained expertise during a period of moment and will tend to be increased even more if your are capable of get specialty area in the specific department such as most mental sickness registration, physiological registry, cancer registry and many more.

Another essential determinant in case there is medical insurance billing and coding salaries will be the form of business when the person will quickly perform. A number of the properly spending market sectors within this discipline would be the pharmaceutical drug businesses, the actual expert, work or even governmental agencies, the particular organizations from the Authorities and the company assistance providers.