Explore a Career in Medical Coding | Los Angeles City College

Explore a Career in Medical Coding

Explore a career as a medical coder and gain knowledge to help you work, with confidence, almost anywhere in the medical field from doctors' offices, clinics, hospitals, or even in the comfort of your home. This course teaches use of the CPT manual and IDC-10-CM which will give you a leg up on others who are new to this career.

Details
Syllabus
Requirements
Instructor
Reviews

Enrollment Options

$135.00

Self-Guided

3 Months Access

No Instructor. Course begins when you enroll.

Instructor-Moderated

6 Weeks Access

Study online with Instructor moderated discussion boards.

Select Course Start Date:

June 12, 2024

July 17, 2024

August 14, 2024

September 11, 2024

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$135.00

Self-Guided

Enroll Now

Details

This is your chance to find out what it's really like to be a medical coder. In this course, you'll learn exactly what medical coders do on a daily basis. You'll learn to use the CPT manual and the ICD-10-CM to find medical codes for any disease, condition, treatment, or surgical procedure, which will give you a leg up on other people who are new to this career. The knowledge you gain here will help you work almost anywhere in the medial field—doctors' offices, clinics, public health facilities, hospitals, labs, nursing homes, insurance agencies, or even the comfort of your own home.

As you explore a career in medical coding, you'll also explore each of the main systems of the human body—integumentary (skin), musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, endocrine, and male and female genitourinary—outlining the medical terminology, conditions, diseases, injuries, treatments, and procedures you will see most often in each of these systems.

Along the way, you will see numerous real-world examples and coding exercises to help you begin using your coding tools in conjunction with your analytical skills to come up with just the right choices to describe any medical situation. As you explore a career in medical coding, you'll get all the hands-on experience and knowledge you need to begin your career with confidence. Check it out, because this might just be a great career choice for you!

Syllabus

Lesson 1 - Medical Coding Basics

The first lesson explores the history of medical insurance and medical coding. After that, take a few minutes to get familiar with the coding books and tools that medical coders use. This lesson finishes up with an important discussion about patient privacy and confidentiality.

Lesson 2 - Coding in the Real World

In this lesson, you'll take a close look at how medical professionals use medical codes in the real world. Get to know the common form medical coders use and explore the different types of medical codes you will find in your coding books. By the time you finish the lesson, you will understand how the different types of codes come together on a claim and how they tell the insurance company a complete story about any doctor-patient encounter.

Lesson 3 - Getting to Know Your CPT Manual

In this lesson, take a detailed tour through the CPT manual where you will find medical codes for the procedures and treatments doctors and other medical professionals provide their patients. You will learn all about the CPT symbols, modifiers, and unlisted procedures. By the end of this lesson, you will be looking up your first codes!

Lesson 4 - Getting to Know Your ICD-10-CM

Similar to the last lesson, you will take a detailed tour through the other coding book used in this course, the ICD-10-CM, which is where you will find the codes for any disease, illness, condition, or symptom that a patient may have. You will learn all about the ICD-10-CM's symbols, formatting, and other conventions; and you will learn where to find external cause codes and Z-codes. By the end of this lesson, you will begin to practice coding diagnoses.

Lesson 5 - Coding the Integumentary System

Starting with this lesson, you'll begin a series of lessons that take you in depth into one body system at a time, which will help you understand specific medical coding situations for each area of the human body. This lesson explores the integumentary (skin) system. You will review the code categories for the most common skin conditions, infections, injuries, and procedures, and then practice coding cases that involve common skin problems.

Lesson 6 - Coding the Musculoskeletal System

In this lesson, you will learn all about the musculoskeletal system and study some important musculoskeletal vocabulary. Review the code categories for the most common muscle and bone conditions and injuries and learn how to code the procedures doctors use to treat common problems.

Lesson 7 - Coding the Respiratory System

This lesson focuses on the respiratory system, and how to code the most common respiratory conditions and injuries. After that, you will practice coding the most common respiratory procedures that doctors use on their patients.

Lesson 8 - Coding the Cardiovascular System

In this lesson, you'll explore the cardiovascular system. You'll learn how to code common heart, vein, and artery conditions and diseases and how to code the procedures doctors use most often to treat these common diagnoses. As always, this lesson follows up on cardiovascular diseases and procedures with coding practice.

Lesson 9 - Coding the Digestive and Endocrine Systems

In this lesson, you will learn all about the digestive system and the endocrine system. Begin by studying some important vocabulary for both systems, and then review the code categories for the most common conditions, diseases, and injuries. After that, explore the procedures doctors perform to fix digestive and endocrine system problems.

Lesson 10 - Coding the Male and Female Genitourinary Systems

In the last of your system-specific lessons, you will review the male and female genitourinary systems; and learn how to code common conditions, diseases, and procedures for both systems. You will also spend time discussing maternity and childbirth and the special medical coding challenges you will need to consider in those cases.

Lesson 11 - Evaluation and Management (E/M) Codes

Ready to get to know Evaluation and Management codes? In this lesson, you will learn the three key components of any E/M service and discover some helpful charts you can use to narrow down an E/M code range to a final E/M code. And as you probably guessed, this lesson ends with plenty of E/M coding practice!

Lesson 12 - Surgical Packages and Modifiers

In the final lesson, you will find out what's included in a surgical package and what's not. You will also learn all about modifiers and find out why medical coders use them to let insurance companies know about special circumstances. Finally, you will put everything you've learned throughout the course together by coding some practice scenarios that incorporate all of the different types of codes!

Requirements

Prerequisites:

There are no prerequisites to take this course.

Requirements:

Hardware Requirements:

This course can be taken on either a PC, Mac, or Chromebook.

Software Requirements:

PC: Windows 8 or later.
Mac: macOS 10.6 or later.
Browser: The latest version of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox are preferred. Microsoft Edge and Safari are also compatible.
Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins.

Other:

Email capabilities and access to a personal email account.

Instructional Material Requirements:

The instructional materials required for this course are not included in enrollment.

A CPT Manual, Professional Edition, and an ICD-10-CM Manual are required for this course.

Please note: Current manuals are not encouraged, but books published within the past five years work very well. It's not necessary to buy the books before the course starts. There is further guidance about books provided in the opening discussion board.

Instructor

Jennifer Della'Zanna

Jennifer Della'Zanna has more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, having worked as a medical transcriptionist, practice administrator, biller, and coding specialist. She writes courses and study guides on the use of technology in health care and regularly contributes to publications about health issues. Della'Zanna is a member of the American Academy of Professional Coders and the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Albright College.

Reviews

If you are interested in learning about medical billing and coding, you will not find a better place to begin, nor a better person from whom to learn. Thanks to Jennifer I’ve found a new career. Her knowledge, gentle coaching and encouragement were key to building my confidence and my understanding of a complicated subject. Along with my highest recommendation and appreciation, I give Jennifer five stars!!

This is the most interesting class I've ever taken. The lessons may be time-intensive, but necessarily so. The material was presented in a very orderly and understandable manner. I appreciated the input of Jennifer Della'Zanna and her staff. Jennifer was so generous, both with her time and her extensive knowledge. She made me feel like she really cared about me personally and about my future.

I thoroughly enjoyed this class and the instructor. Jennifer's passion shined through her teaching, responses and interaction. I admired her patience and understanding through all of this. I am a beginner to medical coding and billing, and I felt this was the perfect introduction to help me understand the basics. Thank you very much.

I'm a senior citizen and this was my first online class. It has been the one of the most enjoyable ways I have spent my money since buying my first tube of lipstick! The class was interactive and those who have joined the discussions have been willing to help their fellow students in need.

I thoroughly enjoyed the way this course was set-up and how comfortable the instructor made the course. She delivered the material in a way that made it seem as if she was right there talking to us. She pointed out extra information or "tips" as the course went along. Jennifer was supposrtive and positive with every student in the discussion areas. She comes across as patient and kind, and really seems to want her students to learn. I have recommended this class to several people already and would not hesitate to take another course from Jennifer Della'Zanna!

I really enjoyed this course. I loved Jennifer's sense of humor throughout the lessons. When she knew it was going to be tough, she would alert us to that. She always made the lessons realistic and sensible. I feel as though I have gained a precise, thorough knowledge for the Medical Coding and Billing. I would definitely recommend this course to anyone interested in pursuing a career in this field.

Coding is a love or hate thing, you know this. I always leaned towards the hate side, but after taking your course, I'm leaning towards like! That's an impressive feat, and I wanted to say thanks so much for your teaching style. It was hard work, but it clicked for me.

I took a Medical Coding class in 2007 and took this course as a refresher. I learned so much more from this one! The instructor has an awesome teaching technique and explained things in detail that helped me understand more than I thought I would. I would definitely recommend her to anyone and everyone!

This course far surpassed what I expected. I anticipated a general overview and was using it to assess if I wished to continue on to a longer program. I was very impressed with the amount of well presented information and hands-on training involved. All of it gave me a wonderful feel for the nature of this career. I was very impressed and would highly recommend to anyone considering this as a career opportunity.

I truly enjoyed this class. I was impressed by my teacher's knowledge of medical coding. The true test of a professional is how they can share their knowledge of a subject matter and show another person how to utilize the information they have learned into their lives. I took CPT and ICD-9-CM classes in 2004, and I didn't learned as much information about coding as I did in this class in six weeks. Thank you!