Medical Billing: What You Need To Know

Medical billing specialist are being entrusted with a serious job. An error can cause not only greater costs for the company you work for but frustration on the patient's end. The knowledge that is expected of a medical coder includes a variety of areas.

If you are looking to venture into the medical billing field, or considering any field in the medical world currently, these are the most common skills and knowledge set that companies are looking for. While there are many areas of medicine, we have taken the time to gather the list that will cover the majority of areas of medicine from hospitals and private medical practices to mental health.

The following list is some of the areas in which knowledge will be required to be a successful medical billing coder. The majority of these courses are knowledge gained through typical medical billing certificate programs.

Medical Office Procedures Medical Keyboarding Medical Terminology Human Anatomy Health Structure and Function Records Management Healthcare Laws and Ethics Medical Insurance Survey of Pathology

CPT® Coding Guidelines CPT-4 HCPCS I, II, III Basic Coding ICD-9-CM ICD-9-CM (Vol 1 and 2) Diagnostic Coding DSM-IV (used only in psychotherapy) Basic Pharmacology Medical Transcription

You can see that it is more than simply knowing the financial aspects of a business or just the medical terminology. Medical billing requires a unique combination of the business and medical fields combined. Too be successful in this field you will need to master both of these worlds.