Have You Considered Medical Billing As Your Career?

Sometimes you feel you’re not in the right job or you have been out of the workforce and you’re ready to jump back in and you want some training that will benefit you, consider medical billing as a career.

First of all, beware. There are some online services that will promise you a medical billing career and will charge you a large amount of money for a list of places to go obtain your learning from. This is a scam and don’t fall for it. There are legitimate places to get a good education in processing medical billing and it can be a profitable and rewarding career. In the 2005 survey the American Medical Association estimates that there are 1.2 million medical billing specialist in the workforce today, and more jobs are expected as the population continues to age. The best part about being a medical billing specialist is you can choose the area you’d best like to work in. You can work with a doctor’s office, a clinic or work with a company that handles medical billing for several different physicians and specialities, which is called outsourcing.

Your responsibilities as a medical biller will be many. You will be responsible for making sure the coding charges generated by the doctor’s office are correct and properly documented and when the medical billing is submitted to the Insurance companies for reimbursement, a check is issued along with an Explanation of Benefits (EOB). The attention to detail and absolute accuracy is mandatory in this field. If you’re the kind of person that likes a puzzle, solves murder mysteries near the middle of the book or movie and will balance their check book until it’s down to the penny accurate, this is the field for you. Every single medical billing claim you process will be individual. You might be doing 10 patients in a row for a physician that specializes in a narrow field such as podiatry, and yet the medical billing will most likely be different for each and every coding claim that you look at.

As you Most physicians not only want you to handle their medical billing, they will want you to handle their collections as well and watch their A/R for accounts that are getting old so you can track reimbursements. Most reimbursements will happen within about 2 weeks and some even sooner.

Look through the various schools. Some will be available to you locally and there are other courses offered online. Review your options carefully and find the best fit for your schedule and your budget. Also, look into becoming certified, it is not mandatory for many levels of medical billing, but it will certainly raise your worth in the industry.

View all Articles by: Melissa Clark, CCS-P