# Top Three Healthcare Trends Affecting Medical Coding Certifications?



## BooValu23 (Jan 8, 2017)

Hi!

This is my first ever post on the AAPC forums...

I've been doing a bit of thinking lately about where I believe healthcare as an industry is going. The top three trends I see are:

A) Hospitals are buying more physician practices and outpatient surgery clinics to shore up declining revenues from reimbursements of inpatient admissions;
B) Interoperability of EHR's across various platforms to facilitate clinical data exchange between physicians and facilities; and
C) MIPS & MACRA will increase value-based payments to doctors in both inpatient & outpatient clinical settings.  

Based on these three trends, I think there could be an increase in the importance of certifications for clinical documentation experts (CDEO) and risk-adjustment coding specialists (CRC). These are the two areas I'm thinking of focusing on for my next set of AAPC certifications to obtain. I was wondering whether anyone has either certification, or both, and would love hearing the thoughts of others on this idea? 

Thanks a lot, and best wishes to everyone in the new year!


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