There's more to auditing than just E&M. I have been auditing since 2003 and frankly E&M is an area I'm less likely to review. Currently, I lead a team of billing compliance auditors, and we review anything that can be billed to a payer, but rarely E&M. We leave that to the auditor/educators, and frankly I'd rather have a lobotomy than have to do that kind of auditing all day long.
There's a certain skill set that I look for in an auditor. There are standards for consistent auditing you must follow so that you don't skew your results. That means you have to be organized and precise in your work. You need to be an excellent researcher because not everything is in the CPT book! Besides understanding coding rules, you will need to be able to read and interpret federal and state guidance, Medicare and Medicaid regulations, payer coverage rules, and state licensure statutes. If you're assigned to audit a service or procedure that you're not familiar with (because you don't get to pick and choose what you audit), you'll be expected to become an expert in a few days. Once you've completed an audit, you'll need to deliver results-- usually to executive leaders, so your writing and speaking skills need to be at the college level (although you may not need a degree). If this sounds like you, then it may be a great career move. I hope other auditors will chime in on this post because not all organizations audit in the same way.
On a typical day, my auditors have a daily huddle where we discuss issues and casework to support each other, and the research I mentioned above is a big part of their early work. They are required to follow the expected scope of the audit (determined by me and key stakeholders in advance) and must set up customized and specific audit worksheets to validate each account they review. If they find an unusual problem, they have to figure out whether it impacts the audit scope, if it needs to be reported as a finding, or (hopefully not) if we have to engage our legal team. They have to do root cause analysis to ensure we provide recommendations to the people who can fix the problem. And they can't cite a single finding unless they can support it with regulatory guidance (otherwise it's an opinion). It's a challenging job, but the salary tops off at six figures. I will point out that this job requires several years of experience in coding/billing first. Still, it's an interesting role for someone who gets tired of coding the same stuff over and over. Good luck in your future plans.
