Alicia: OK.
We're going to go ahead and jump in with our slides.
The first one was pretty interesting.
Q: She says, "I am just about to finish the Medical Billing and Coding training program
at a local technology center.
What credential should I look at obtaining first?"
A: First of all, congratulations!
That's great that you are about to complete that.
There are two main groups that you can go to for credentialing for coding: the AAPC
is one we talked about quite a bit, but AHIMA is equally as good as the AAPC.
The AAPC is geared a little bit more towards the physician-based coder, and the AAPC has
a lot of specialty credentials.
AHIMA is known for doing inpatient coding and they have been around since the 1920s,
and the AAPC has been around since I think the early 80s.
Both are equal in number of members, and maybe the AAPC has a little bit more now, I'm not
sure.
Last I heard they were getting a little bit more.
But both of those websites, the AAPC.com or AHIMA.org are excellent organizations to get
certification in.
If you go to the AAPC, the basic certification is the CPC and that Certified Professional
Coder.
You can also get their new Certified Professional Biller (CPB) that if you went through that
program for coding and billing, some people just really enjoy billing, and now you can
get certified in that.
And we're working on getting this for us as well, getting a CPB course started and it's
almost ready to go.
Let's see with AHIMA they have a certified coding associate, which is a CCA which is
kind of like a beginning or maybe the CPC-A, the CPC you can get when you first get certified
if you're not experienced you get an "A" for apprenticeship.
Or, you go straight for the Certified Coding Specialist (CCS).
That's the two main ones that AHIMA puts out.
Again, both are equally good and well known organizations.
You can even get multiple certifications by getting certified through the AAPC and AHIMA,
which is a good thing especially if your employer pays for that; but keep in mind if you do
decide to get dual certifications with the organizations you're paying a yearly membership
dues to both and not always do your CEUs transfer back and forth.
Most of them will but sometimes they will not, so you want to be aware of that.
But again, if your employer is willing to pay for that kind of stuff, take advantage
of it.
Now, one more thing, if you go to our YouTube channel we have a previous YouTube spot that
Boyd set up that shows the differences between the AAPC and AHIMA, and there is the link.
I wasn't going to click on it, but I just want to have that up for you to look at.
It's under, we have two channels: Coding Certification or Medical Coding Cert., either one of those.
And then you could just type in, you could put in "AAPC" and that video will pop up for
you.