medical coding continuing education
Alicia: This can go really, really fast guys because mainly, what CEUs are, Continuing
Education Units.
And if youíve got a license or certification of any type, youíre going to be expected
to get CEUs.
It doesnít matter if you know, youíre a doctor, youíre nurse.
When I was a real estate agent, I had to have CEUs for that.
When I was teaching in the college, they have educational CEUs.
Anywhere from a doctor right to a mechanic, if youíre a certified mechanic, they make
you continueÖ do your continuing education.
And the idea is to keep all the new information thatís coming in fresh and so that you donít
become stagnant, that to maintain your certification, youíre showing that you still know the information
you need to know.
Or that youíre being updated to all the changes.
Thatís really what continuing educationís all about.
I think if we scroll down a little bit on that pageÖ the CPC must haveÖ they do theirs
every 2 years which is kind of nice.
And see, members with apprentice are not required to have 2 year medical coding experience.
Letís see, membership is required to be renewed annually and 36 continuing education units
or CEUs must be submitted every two years.
For verification and authentication of expertise ñ thatís ultimately what itís for.
Thereís a link here to the AAPC.
Actually, this is to the actual page that tells you what you need to know.
The thing about CEUs though for the AAPCÖ and I know especially when youíre newly certified,
again, you want to know.
You need 36 CEUs every 2 years.
But if you get more than one certification, you will need to get additional CEUs.
So look there where it states 2 certifications.
They have to get 48 CEUs every 2 years.
Laureen isÖ sheís bi-certified, two certifications, CPC and CPCI.
So she has to get 48 CEUs and in addition to that, when youíre CPCI, you have to maintain
educational CEUs.
And I canít rememberÖ I think itís 16 or 8 or something.
Laureen: Yeah, CTs.
Alicia: Yeah, CT teaching.
Yeah, I had to get teaching units at the colleg.
So 3 certifications, 60 CEUs forÖ it just goes up and up.
So like when you get your Coding Edge magazine and you look, sometimes people wrote articles
or you see somebody that has like 5 CEUs behind their name, theyíve got to get 80 every 2
years.
So itís wonderful to have multiple certification but unless youíre employerís going to pay
for your CEUs and your membership and some of that other stuff, you might want to think
about if itís beneficial for you, especially in the beginning, to have multiple certifications.
Because you know, itís going to cost you more.
And so think about that.
Now the other thing to mention real quick about the CEUs, letís say youíre going to
get dual membership.
Youíre going to go through the AAPC and youíre going to go through AHIMA as well.
Well, not always do your certifications for the AAPC work for AHIMA and vice versa.
I was going to take a greatÖ I want to take this really great bootcamp that I saw and
the lastÖ I saw that it was AHIMA-certified so I just assumed it was for the AAPC as well.
And I thought, ìYou know what?
I think Iíll just ask just in case.î Good thing I did because the AAPC did not recognize
it.
And so I would have paid you know, over $1000 for these greatÖ like 16 CEUs and I couldnít
have used them for my certification.
So when you go and you see CEUs offered, make sure theyíre approved by who you have your
certification with.
Now, through CCO, all of our CEUs that are offered through the webinars that LaureenÖ
the E&M and the modifier, they are all approved for CEUs.
The Blitz is approved for CEU.
So you need toÖ
Laureen: The Blitz isnít.
Alicia: The Blitz is not, okay.
And Iím sure Laureen is working on content and stuff.
Weíll be adding new CEU stuff.
We have to go through an approval process and thereís a lot of background stuff that
has to be done.
But your local chapters, every time you go to a meeting, usually offer CEUs.
Thatís a way to get free ones.
The Coding Edge has a little exam that you can go in and take and get like a half a CEU
or one CEU I think.
And thereís several ways to get them.
But it is a way of life.
So know that as soon as youíre certified, that is something that youíre going to want
to keep track of.
One last point about that, you want to keep track of that and actually keep them in a
folder.
Laureen was telling me one time, she actually scans hers into her system, into the computer
so you can bring them up anytime you want.
You need to save them because you could get audited.
You need to prove that youíve you know, keep track of those.
So Iíve got a little red binder withÖ that I keep all of mine in.
And thatís just something else you need toÖ
Laureen: I have a program called Evernote and I just scan all my CEU stuff in there.
But you could scan it and just save it on a folder on your hard drive too.
As long as you have it to pull it in case you get audited.
Yeah, regarding the CEUs that codingcertification.org offers, we call them On Demand classes now
because the webinar thing was kind of confusing it.
So theyíre on demand classes.
Weíve got the E&M one and the modifier one right now.
We will be adding more titles.
We have attempted to get this webinar approved for CEU but the AAPC has denied it because
they said they donít approve CPC Prep which is kind of interesting because I just taught
a Blitz class in Pittsburg and I do it every year and they approve it for CEUs.
So they wonítÖ you know, anyway, I wonít get into the politics of things.
But I am trying to see if they will change their minds.
Weíre kind of compiling a bunch of these webinars to show them that we do cover coding
content even if it is a multiple choice question that weíre talking about.
Weíre talking about coding.
So you know, if we subtract out the 30 minutes for the other talk you know, itís definitely
60 minutes of coding content.
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