I am a quality auditor and coding researcher. I also am part of our CPC group that meets weekly to discuss compliance. Compliance actually saved my desire to work in this field. I was previously a claim recovery team lead that took my CPC and passed as magna cum laude. My manager let me code part time and do claim recovery part time. My quality was great and I got bored. I started thinking what else is there other than management? Which I didn't want to do. My manager already had bigger plans for me as a quality auditor and researcher because i'm so thorough. While thinking about going back to school I was going to go back for IT versus continuing in the medical field. Until I read the salary surveys in a AAPC newsletter. 70K for compliance was appealing. Plus it's interesting to me. So I signed up for the CPCO and I am getting on the job experience at the same time. After the CPCO I will be going back to get an associates/bachelors in healthcare. Compliance and maybe working for CERT, the OIG, CMS, and/or an auditing company, etc. is way more interesting to me than scrubbing claims or management.