Avoid getting stuck in the non-management rut.

Are you ready to take the next step in your medical coding career, but you’re not sure how to grab your boss’s attention and show him you’re ready for upper management? No problem. Follow these tips:

1. Do your job well. There’s no reason to give you more responsibility if you can’t handle what you have now, right? Get your superiors to notice your potential by excelling in your current supervisor position. Turn parts around in your department faster than other departments, maintain a perfect quality record in your department, and do your best to keep your department accident-free.

2. Do your homework. Learn more about what upper managers do in your company. Find out what their responsibilities are. If you know someone outside of the company in a managerial position, ask him to describe his job to you. You want to get a sense of whether you can handle the job.

3. Develop people skills. Your ability to get along with and effectively manage people will be even more important when you’re in a higher position. Respect your employees, be diplomatic with supervisors from other departments, and get your workers to work hard for you because they respect you, not because they’re afraid of you.

4. Show initiative. Unless your boss is a mind reader, he probably has no idea you’re looking to move up the ladder. Show him that you’re ready to move ahead by offering to help with projects like managing the year-end new code training, by volunteering for any opportunities like planning the company picnic, or by working on an employee-relations committee.

5. Ask. Show your boss that you’re really interested by asking him what opportunities are available. Don’t wait for him to come to you. Even if no positions are immediately available, he’ll keep you in the back of his mind when a position opens up. And because most companies like to promote from within, you’ve got a good chance.

Be a medical coding hero: Sign up at Supercoder.com, and join the coding community at the Supercoder.com Facebook Fan Page.

Where in the world is Supercoder Girl? Twitter: @supercodergirl Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/supercodergirl

If you’re baffled by something, admitting it may impress your colleagues.

You’re surrounded by experts, including medical experts, billing experts and management experts. But you’re an expert too. Sharing your expertise with others is an art form in itself. Some of the world’s greatest experts never learn this art, but it’s easy.

Just remember to:

Tell the truth. Don’t exaggerate what you know, or make up an answer when someone asks you a question. Don’t be afraid to admit you don’t know the answer to a question. Real experts always admit when they don’t know something. Just ask Supercoder Girl about peripheral vascular coding.

Keep it simple. Whether you’re explaining a complicated filing system or a medical procedure your office performs, use plain language and simple sentences. Break the subject down to the basics and go through it in simple terms. If someone has to hide behind jargon and can’t explain a concept simply, chances are that person is only a pretend expert.

Speak up. If you know what you’re talking about, don’t hide your light. Share your expertise with others. Be confident, but not cocky. Real experts are humble but forthright.

Be a medical coding hero: Sign up at Supercoder.com, and join the coding community at the Supercoder.com Facebook Fan Page.

Where in the world is Supercoder Girl? Twitter: @supercodergirl Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/supercodergirl

These five proven ways will really impress your boss and land you a raise.

Have you ever asked yourself, “I love my job but would like to begin moving up within our office structure. How can I get noticed by my supervisor?” One of the fastest paths to promotions and pay increases is to impress your manager.

This doesn’t occur by insincere compliments or shallow brown-nosing, but by doing what you can to make his or her job easier and your coding office run more effectively. Here are five proven ways to impress your manager.

Excel at the fundamentals. Do the job you are paid to do as well as you possibly can. The manager will then have to spend less time following up on your work and correcting mistakes. You want to be the employee she can count on to do the job right the first time.

Be the rabbit. When your manager announces a new process or program, fully embrace the changes and run with them. This gives your manager powerful proof that her ideas can pay off. Your success will then be pointed to as the example of what others can do.

Ask for more. Amaze your manager by saying, “I occasionally have an extra 10 minutes during the day when all my work is completed. Is there something else you’d like  me to do for you during that time?” This extra work might increase your responsibilities and authority.

Confide in your manager. You increase your chances of promotion just by telling your manager you want to succeed. Ask what you need to do to reach your goals and then do what is requested. Your manager will now consider you when future opportunities arise.

Show loyalty. Remember that your top loyalty is to the practice. Refrain from water-cooler conversations that badmouth your manager. If you detect workplace theft, co worker harassment, improper safety procedures or other negative behaviors, alert your manager.

Be a hero. Sign up for Supercoder.com.

What will you do without a superbill? What will you do?

Some coders I know are a little scared of the changes that electronic medical
records are bound to bring to their jobs. But there’s no reason to be scared,
because EMR also brings new opportunities to advance your coding career — if you
know the ropes.

When I learned that the American Academy of Professional Coders was hosting a
workshop in my area called ‘EMRs: What You Need To Know Now,’ I hightailed it on
over there. During the session, I learned how to shop for and select an EMR
system, how to work with IT-types to make it work for my practice, and I got a
glimpse of how EMR will change our medical coding jobs.

Right now, many coders focus on “rescue and recovery,” explained instructor
Shery Smith, CPC, CPC-H, CPC-I, CEMC, CCS, CCS-P, who’s also on the coding staff
of a large teaching institution that is using EMR already. “Rescue and recovery
coding” or “back end coding” involves tracking denials, finding the coding
problems that sparked them in the first place, and appealing the claim.

But with EMR implementation, more coders will become “front end coders.” That
is, they will apply their coding and regulatory knowledge at the front end to
make sure the EMR system is tailored correctly for their practice or department.
If you excel at educating clinicians on coding techniques, you’ll be in high
demand when you organization implements EMR, Smith says.

EMR will put a lot more of the coding in physicians’ hands, once your coding
staff has worked with your IT staff to tailor the system and incorporate the
correct prompts. “The new focus for coders will be coding educator and auditor,”
says Smith. And coders that are knowledgeable enough and comfortable enough to
audit and educate physicians are a “rare breed” in some places.

Meet the ‘Extroverted Librarian’ Coder: Savvy researchers who are good with
data, but can also communicate well with clinicians, IT types and other team
members will be in high demand, predicts Kaiser Permanente, Colorado’s James M.
Taylor, MD, CPC, who wrote the curriculum for the AAPC’s workshop.

In this kind of role, you might do a ten-record snapshot audit for each provider
every month and meet with them for individual education sessions. Or, you might
be available for their questions or what Smith calls “ad hoc education
sessions.” You’d have to be committed to staying abreast of updates that affect
your providers, and may be called upon to do “coding spotlights” at clinician
meetings.

Not the extroverted type? Don’t worry, says Smith. There are some back-end
coding issues that are best left to coders so as not to distract physicians from
patient care. For example, most organizations will probably have coders keep up
with changing carrier rules and haggle with carriers when denials do come up. If
you’re the type of coder who likes to sit in the back office and “just code,”
there will probably be a role for you — even in the brave new era of EMR.

Available on CD: From Paper to Digital — What Coders Need to Know Now.

Your doctors are depending on you to get your practice on board with the new payment incentives.

As Vice President Joe Biden so eloquently put it, the passage of the health care reform bill this past week really is … um … “huge.” And while it may not have been the VP’s very best day on the job, it’s your chance to shine in your job as a medical coder or biller.

Show your physicians you’ve got your eye on their bottom line learning how health care reform will affect their reimbursement. And we’ve got a good place to start.

√ If you work in a family medicine, general internal medicine, or geriatrics practice, take a look at the percentage of your practice’s Medicare charges that are office, nursing facility and home visits. If these E/M services make up at least 60 percent of your total Medicare charges, you may be eligible for a 10 percent bonus payment for these services from 2011–16, says the AMA.

√ If you work in a general surgery practice in a health professional shortage area (HPSA), your practice is on the short list for 10 percent bonus payments for procedures having a 10 or 90-day global. Learn more about HPSAs here.

√ If you code for behavioral health, your clinicians will see a 5 percent Medicare reimbursement increase for psychotherapy visits.

√ If your practice performs preventive services such as immunizations; preventive care for infants, children and adolescents; and additional preventive care and screenings for women, you may see more patients utilizing these services as Medicare and private plans eliminate cost-sharing.

√ If you work in a family practice or ob-gyn practice that treats pregnant patients on Medicaid, your practice will see reimbursement for smoking cessation services.

Let’s give a shout-out to Supercoder.com’s Torrey Kim for alerting us to this cool link from the AMA. And stay tuned to Supercoder.com for more articles on how health reform will change your medical coding job.

Mark these 3 crucial phrases in your CPT manual and cruise to the correct answer.

Last week, a reader who’s preparing to take the CPC exam this May asked me to tackle unbundling, and to suggest a few ways to avoid choosing answers in the exam that inappropriately unbundle parts of procedures and are therefore incorrect. You can reduce your chances of making unbundling mistakes if you carefully read and mark your CPT manual as you study, and we’ve got some key phrases you should look out for.

The good news about the Certified Professional Coding exam is that you don’t have to worry much about National Correct Coding Initiative bundles. Sure, you should know what CCI edits are to answer a regulatory or practice management question that may crop up, but you don’t have to know about specific CCI edits unless that same bundling issue is in the CPT code descriptor or guidelines in your CPT manual.

Open-Book Test Tip …

As you study, note phrases in the guidelines or in the descriptors that indicate a CPT code is inclusive, that is, that it already includes something you might be tempted to unbundle. The great thing about your CPT manual? It’s not at all creative with language. Sure, there’s lots of medical terminology, but the manual uses the same word patterns over and over to signal to you what’s included in a code, and what’s not.

Here are 3 phrases that can help you identify wrong answers and make your way to the right one.

1. “Inclusive.” In the section guidelines, CPT often stresses outright what’s included in a code so that you don’t make unbundling mistakes.

To see how this works, take a look at CPT 2010’s new guidelines for facet joint injections. Before 2010, coders were able to separately report 77003 (Fluoroscopic guidance and localization of needle or catheter tip for spine or paraspinous diagnostic or therapeutic injection procedures [epidural, transforaminal epidural, subarachnoid, paravertebral facet joint, paravertebral facet joint nerve, or sacroiliac joint], including neurolytic agent destruction). But new language in the 2010 CPT manual now makes what used to be “separate reporting” and turns it into “incorrect unbundling.”

Here’s why: Check out (and highlight) the wording in the new section guidelines — “Image guidance (fluoroscopy or CT) and any injection of contrast are inclusive components of codes 64490-64495. Imaging guidance and localization are required for the performance of paravertebral facet joint injections described by codes 64490-64495.” In other words, because image guidance is implicitly bundled into the new CPT codes, you may no longer separately report 77003.

2. “With or without.” Watch out test takers. If you see that phrase in a code descriptor, it’s a strong signal that you shouldn’t separately report whatever comes after the phrase, “with or without.” AS you review your manual, underline that phrase every time you see it so you’re sure not to miss it.

For example, if you’re tackling a coding scenario on the CPC exam that mentions a physician repairing a urethrocele during an anterior colporrhaphy, don’t choose an answer that has the urethrocele repair code in addition to 57240 (Anterior colporrhaphy, repair of cystocele with or without repair of urethrocele). As the descriptor makes clear, you should not separately report the utherocele repair because it’s included in 57240’s code description.

3. “Unilateral or bilateral.” If you see this phrase in a code descriptor, it’s a strong signal that you should not choose an answer that appends modifier 50 to the code.

Example: Kyphoplasty (22523-22525, Percutaneous vertebral augmentation, including cavity creation [fracture reduction and bone biopsy included when performed] using mechanical device, one vertebral body, unilateral or bilateral cannulation [e.g., kyphoplasty] . . .) is one of those tricky CPT codes that is already bilateral in nature. n fact, that component is built right into the code description.
Therefore, you should not append modifier 50 to kyphoplasty procedures, such as 22523, 22524 and +22525.

Do you have CPC test worries you’d like us to tackle in My Coding Career? Write us in the comment area and keep your great suggestions coming.

As a new manager, know that your employees follow your behaviors closely; they may scrutinize your every action. But there are ways to show your employees that you are someone they can trust and respect to lead them in the company.

Here are some simple rules to live by when entering into your new niche, according to Tom Schmitt and Arnold Perl, authors of Simple Solutions:

√ Listen to your employees. Just like you want people to listen and pay attention to you, your employees crave the same kind of attention from you. Good communication with employees involves you being a good listener.

√ Be approachable. Your employees need to know that they can talk to you about any issues or problems without being afraid of you. Keep their concerns private and respect their thoughts and ideas.

Their dignity is important to them, and you don’t want to make them feel alienated in any way.

√ Show sincere interest in your employees. Let them know you have real concern for their welfare, show them how to succeed at their jobs, and let them know when they’ve done well. These actions tell your employees that you respect them. In turn, your show of respect and interest will help you retain good employees.

√ Give and take feedback. Not only will you need to reward good performance, you will also need to address any performance problems or failures. Be candid about their performance, and allow them to be part of the solution. Encourage them to give feedback to you about a process or goal that they might not totally agree with.

√ Surround yourself with strong players. Take cues from a fellow supervisor who is well liked and effective. Pay attention to how she handles similar situations, and learn from her actions. Above all, a good manager needs to have self-awareness about her abilities as well as her misgivings. Use your strong abilities to adapt to each situation, and work on areas that aren’t your strong points.

Adapted from Successful Supervisor.

Which is better? A coding certification or a college degree?

We hear from lots of medical coders and billers who are going to school part-time while they work a full-time job. They might be pursing a college degree in Health Administration, for example, or a master’s degree in HIT.

While a trip back to the classroom may very well jumpstart your career, you should ask yourself these questions as you make your decision:

✎ Assess your income. Many people decide to return for a degree after they have reviewed their income status. If your income isn’t as high as you would like it to be, or you have a hard time budgeting for your and your family’s needs, then you might want to decide to advance your career by obtaining a degree.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median annual income for an employee with a high school degree was $27,915. For an employee with a bachelor’s degree, it was $51,206, and for a masters degree or higher, it was $74,602 or more. Assess where you are in terms of those income brackets, and determine if getting a higher degree may help you advance financially as well as professionally.

Coder’s Tip: A coding certification, like a CPC or an RHIT, may give you just as much of an income boost as some degrees. To estimate how earning a certification might affect your career, take a look at the American Academy of Professional Coders’ yearly salary surveys. The American Health Information Management Association also certifies health informatics professionals, and you can check AHIMA’s salary survey information here.

✎ Assess your financial need. Determine how much money it will cost you to return to a school of your choosing. If you’re going part-time, you may still be able to qualify for some financial aid. Check into what your school would offer you as a part-time student, and see what other outside scholarships and grants for which you may be eligible. You should also ask what the company policy is on tuition reimbursement.

✎ Assess your schedule. You will want to look at what adjustments you may have to make to your schedule to go back to school. If you have kids, you will want to make sure you have a babysitter on hand who will be able to watch them when you are in class or studying.

✎ Assess your career goals. Make sure you’re set on your career goals. Know what field you’re getting into and what it takes to obtain a degree within that major. You may also think about positions you want to advance to once you complete your studies.

Adapted from Teamwork.

Want to explore coding certification opportunities? Go here and contact a friendly customer service professional who can answer your questions.

Are any of these health systems or plans near you? How to suss out medical coding jobs as they come open.

While waiting at the pediatrician’s office with my kid the other day (no, it wasn’t the flu, thank goodness), I came across Working Mother Magazine’s list of the 100 best large companies to work for. And here’s the good news for us medical coding and billing professionals — at least 17 of the 100 companies listed are health systems or health plans that hire folks like us. That’s almost 20 percent.

How does Working Mother pick its ‘Best 100?’ The magazine judges how well the company’s benefits help its employees achieve ‘work-life’ balance, something appealing to anyone with a family and/or a life outside of work. They consider the employer’s telecommuting opportunities, flex-time options and child care benefits, for example.

How to find job openings: If you see an employer in the list below that’s based near you (or a place you’d like to live), google its corporate web site and go to the ‘employment’ page. Because the companies are all large, you can search positions by keyword. For example, I found 9 open positions listed right now at Baptist Health in South Florida with the keyword ‘coder.’ Don’t forget to try multiple keywords to describe what you are — like ‘coding,’ ‘biller,’ ‘informatics,’ etc. If you don’t see an opening, most sites allow you to submit a resume should something come up.

What follows is a list of the 18 health care systems and plans on Working Mother’s list, a sample benefit they have, where they’re based, and a link to the magazine’s write up about them.

Baptist Health South Florida offers $64,000 college scholarships to children of employees.

Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina. Based in Durham and with offices around the state, BCBS-NC offers telecommuting, job-sharing and compressed work weeks.

Bon Secours Richmond (Virginia) Health System. If a spouse of a Bon Secours employee loses his or her job, the health system offers career counseling at no charge.

Children’s Healthcare of Altanta: Free, onsite training with dieticians and personal fitness coaches.

Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago: Twenty days of free backup childcare per year — great for those teacher workdays and snow days.

HCA Virginia Health System: Among the benefits at this Richmond, VA-based company? ‘Daddy Boot Camp’ which pairs rookie dads with mentors who are veteran dads.

Mercy Health System based in Janesville, WI offers free health screenings and discounted school physicals and flu shots to employees and their families.

At Northwestern Memorial Healthcare in Chicago, nearly half of employees compress their workweeks.

To respond to the emotional stresses this recession has created, Pitt County Memorial Health System in Greenville, NC has expanded its free counseling program for employees and their children.

Providence Health & Services in Alaska. Looking to adopt a child? This health system will reimburse you up to $2,500 in travel and counseling expenses.

Scripps Health based in (where else?) Southern California offers six free chair massages per year. Say om.

If your kid has a sick day, TriHealth in Cincinnati will help you arrange for in-home child care that’ll cost you $2.50 per hour.

At University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics, on-site cafeterias and pharmacies make it easy for parents to run dinner and prescription errands on breaks.

Are you a caregiver to an adult? VCU Health System in Richmond has on-site adult day care centers.

Children who are first in their families to go to college receive $20,000 in scholarships from Indianapolis-based WellPoint.

WellStar Health System in Marietta Georgia. Gotta love backup childcare priced at $2-$4 per hour.

Yale-New Haven Hospital: “Anyone settling in New Haven can tap a forgivable home loan of $10,000, plus a $200 monthly subsidy if the home is in any of four neighborhoods near the hospital,” reports Working Mother.

Your chances of getting a good coding job increase when you’re certified. Find out more here.