Should I quit my job as a bank teller to become a medical billing and coding specialist?
November 22nd, 2009 by admin
I am 30 yrs old with two beautiful boys. I’ve been working for 8 months as a bank teller. I’ve been really thinking about taking a course in medical billing and coding. I’ve been doing my research and from what I’ve been reading it’s a promising career. Im not really all that happy with my current career choice financially. Does anybody have any advice on my career decision? HELP
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Tags: bank, become, Billing, Coding, Medical, quit, should, Specialist, teller
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There’s lots of good information and training available at ahima.org. I considered it for a while but decided to go for nursing instead.
The pay for billers and coders vary greatly depending where you and what certifications you have. Working for a hospital requires the CPC credential and the money is good and benefits excellent. Working for a doctors office or clinic w/o certification pays about $12-$15 an hour starting out. With certification, working in a doctors office would be around $15-$18 an hour. Hospital coders make about $20 an hour starting w/ benefits. Working at home- some coders work at home for doctors offices and some billers do the same. If you get into electronic claims submission, it can be lucrative but difficult to find the clients at first. Bank tellers do not make good money, in my opinion. I feel the career change would be beneficial to you. I recommend reading AHIMAs website. Also check out http://www.med-certification.com. You can get quality training online, but BEWARE of companies that are really software vendors pretending to be schools to rope you into buying their software. Good online training should not cost more than $2,000.
Another thing, if you plan to do billing at home, there will be a hefty software expense for you. For example, the going price for Medisoft Patient Accounting Software is about $1,000. So, there will be start up costs.
Your best best, in my opinion, is to get some good online training. Get your CCA credential from AHIMA and start out in a doctor’s office doing coding and billing. Then, study and get your CCS P credential and then continue moving up from there. Eventually, I’d shoot for a hospital coding job.
It is a good career choice, stable and solid, and growing.