Basic Certification exams to become Certified Professional Coder

Since the time professionals have taken medical coding as a career, they have the curiosity about how to be called a Certified Professional coder. Having a Certification with a nice experience in medical coding will surely give you a good growth in your career. Many medical coders first start learning about medical codes and then go for the Certification exams. Nowadays even a fresher without having any experience is interested to become a Certified Professional coder through medical coding certification exams.

Because of the good jobs for Certified professional coders many professional are interested to make a career in medical coding. Now, I am from India and I see here that there are many job vacancies in the field of medical coding. So, you can understand how much medical coding field has grown in last few years.

Since, we are here to talk about the basic certification exams in medical coding, we will first just review few of the exams, which will boost the career of a medical coder.

Read also: CPC exam preparation and clearing Tips

Basic Certification exams to become Certified Professional Coder

Certified Professional Coder or CPC Certification

Every year AAPC (American Academy of Professional Coders), organize CPC (certified Professional Coder) exam for the entire professionals who want to become a Certified Professional coder. Now, this is the most common exam organized every year by AAPC and most of coders choose CPC exam for certification.

               

You have two attempts (one free retake) to clear this CPC exam. However, I would suggest clearing the exam in the first attempt. The CPC exam is full of 150 Multiple-choice questions. There are different sections in CPC examination paper. I would suggest solving questions, which take less time to answer than the difficult one.

It is one the basic exams to clear and get Certified by AAPC. Once you have cleared the exam you become a member of AAPC and a Certified Professional Coder. You can get the best sample CPC exam guide here which will surely help in clearing this exam.

COC (Certified outpatient coder)

Certified outpatient coder is almost same like the CPC exam.  The only difference here is the questions in COC are from outpatient settings (emergency department visits, outpatient clinic visits, Ambulatory surgeries, radiology and laboratory and outpatient therapies (physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and chemotherapy). This also has a lot of value if you clear the COC exam. Being certified COC coder jobs are easy to find in any healthcare firm or hospitals. This also has 150 Multiple-choice questions and has two attempt (one fee retake) like CPC only.

Read also: How to become a Certified Professional Coder

Certified Inpatient Coder (CIC)

This exam has been newly introduced by AAPC. You would not find many coders with this certification. However, this exam is difficult to clear compare to above two exams. This exam consists of 60 multiple choice questions and 10 inpatient cases with fill in the blank. Therefore, it is subjective as well as objective question paper.

So, we have to be more careful for answering the question especially the inpatient cases. This exam also has two attempts (one free retake). This exam mainly concentrates on inpatient coding and inpatient coding methodologies. So, if you have healthy experience in inpatient coding, you can surely go for this exam.

Hope, you got the clear idea about the basic exams conducted by AAPC for medical coders. Do solve some model or practice questions papers for preparing for these exams. “Practice makes us Perfect” so keep solving sample questions and appear any one the above exams. All the best for clearing the exams friends.

11 Thoughts to “Basic Certification exams to become Certified Professional Coder”

  1. […] coding. Nevertheless, with the time I started taking my career seriously and started applying for Medical coding Certification exams. To prepare and Clear Certification exam in first attempt is little tough. Why I am saying this, […]

  2. […] Read also: Basic Certification for Certified Professional coder […]

  3. […] stop you. Therefore, when I thought of taking medical coding as a career I wanted to be called as a Certified Professional Coder (CPC). So, to achieve this I started working hard for CPC exam […]

  4. […] to understand, if you know how to use them then you can easily answer any question on modifiers in Certified Professional coder exam. Let us first know the full description about modifier […]

  5. […] (Continue education units) are important to retain your AAPC or AHIMA credentials. All the certified medical coders have to submit an allotted number of coding CEUs before few months of their renewal date. But, many […]

  6. […] some knowledge in your free hours as well. There are many sample questions available online for medical coding certification exams, which will help you in clearing CPC Exam or CCS exam. These are the basic exams conducted by AAPC […]

  7. […] medical coder without taking any training. You can also check my previous post about the certification exams in medical coding and the tips and technique to clear those exam mainly CPC.  The first basic certification exam […]

  8. […] diseases are very closely linked with each other, we will be having problem for coding them. In Medical coding certification exam like CPC, there are questions from these topics and it is very important to know how to code such […]

  9. […] in taking first step towards CPC certification. The CPT and ICD codebooks are the main players of CPC Certification exam. These codebooks always talk about codes which decodes into anatomy site of any human body which […]

  10. […] we know these codebooks are the real factors for wining these exams. I was initially unaware of the Medical coding field and the certification exams conducted by AAPC and AHIMA. The same feeling was with most of my friends who were trying to pursue […]

  11. […] a fresher, coders do not have much knowledge about medical coding certification exams. Once we start gaining experience as medical coder we start looking for certifications. If your […]

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