Can someone please weigh in on something for me? I have been in healthcare industry for almost 30 years now. I have been with my current employer for 20 years. I have my CPC and have since 2013. I have been asked by my current boss to train/teach the front desk scheduler (new employee) to do coding/billing/precert/payment posting, just about everything I do. I have to be honest, I do NOT feel comfortable teaching anyone to do "coding/billing". I swear, is it just me or does everyone think we just are data entry with just a little actual knowledge?
I am sorry, but after doing this for 30 years both on payer side and provider/ancillary side, there are things I could never "teach/show" someone. If they want someone else with such knowledge, then either hire someone with those credentials OR make them go to school and take the 5 + hour test for their CPC or whatever certification they want to obtain. NOBODY showed me how to be a coder/biller so then I could put that on my resume and claim I knew more than I actually did. I went to my local college and took the 16 week course, studied, then sat for what was the most grueling 5 hour and 40 minutes of my life while having twin daughters at home.
Ok, so my question is can my employer FORCE me to teach someone coding/billing?
I am sorry, but after doing this for 30 years both on payer side and provider/ancillary side, there are things I could never "teach/show" someone. If they want someone else with such knowledge, then either hire someone with those credentials OR make them go to school and take the 5 + hour test for their CPC or whatever certification they want to obtain. NOBODY showed me how to be a coder/biller so then I could put that on my resume and claim I knew more than I actually did. I went to my local college and took the 16 week course, studied, then sat for what was the most grueling 5 hour and 40 minutes of my life while having twin daughters at home.
Ok, so my question is can my employer FORCE me to teach someone coding/billing?
. You can never train a person to be a Coder unless your are a Certified AAPC teacher. You can only train the coworker on the actual codes that your office uses. I don't know what specialty you are in but I am in Orthopedics and it is a very complex specialty with many bone/fracture codes that is very difficult to code at times especially Trauma patients. We train people to search for the CPT/DX codes in our EMR system with certain keywords and we as coders audit to make sure that they have picked the correct codes. We do train new employees on medical billing because you only learn that by hands on experience and shadowing other people in your billing office.