Share Your Tips

I am the owner of  Medical_Coders_Resource_Networking_Group

And Coding Smarter Office Support Plus a Learning Center they are full of free resources even those I have copyrights on.  Making life easier for the coding professional is my motto.

I am an instructor, text book auditor and Project Manager, coder

Christine.Goans@gmail.com

As a tutor and adjunct coding instructor, I have tried to keep a tally of useful resources in my mind for newer coders and I suggest www.ericacodes.com as A#1 for physician coders and billers of any specialty.  Nearly every website listed there is also very resourceful and helpful for students.  On my website (www.tools4coding.com), I have listed more resources that are very helpful for students under the section CCS study tools.   Most definitely recommend Channel Publishing and their resource tools for hospital coders (Clinotes and Exp. Table as mentioned above).  Also, highly recommend AMA's CPT Professional Edition, Coding with Modifiers, etc.   I have several other lists of resources specific to a certain area of coding that I would be happy to share if you need that type of information.

Our department keeps on hand:

Faye Brown, Table of Drugs & Chemicals (Channel Pub), Ingenix Coders' Desk Reference: Procedures and Diagnosis, and the Davis Abbreviations book. I also use the Saunders "Pharmaceutical Word Book", Mosby's "Diagnostic and Laboratory Test Reference."

Web sources include www.ACEP.org (ED physician), www.ahima.org, www.coding911.com.

The Faye Brown and "Health Information Management" by Huffman were great during school. But when I finished I needed a good pharmacology book. The WebMD site was good back then, but MedicineNet.com is great site for me now!

1. Wish I had had Google!

2. Wish I had been encouraged by my school to become certified right out of school, when the information was fresh.

3. Stedman's are a wonderful resource.

Quick Look Drug Reference will be great help.  You can refer "www.mtdaily.com" to get a feel of the reports.  Hope these info will help you out in some way.

When I first started out in transcription I was trained on the job.  The most valuable piece of refernce for me was a Nursing Drug Handbook.  The drugs were the hardest things to learn, generic, nongeneric, capitalized or not.  Plus verifying dosages, getting familiar enough to know when something might be wrong.  Also I would recommend Stedman's Word Books.  Another great source of reference is your local clinic.  They often have old lab service books, nursing handbooks, PDRs that they just haven't gotten rid of.  Offer to purchase them, you might find they are willing to let you have them if you'll just take them away.   Another must is a good medical spellchecker for your computer, I purchased Stedman's.  Regarding websites:  I still use http://www.acronymfinder.com/ for those sneaky acronyms, http://www.rxlist.com, http://www.mt911.com/ is a great help with lots of things.  I have a huge list of websites, my needs depend on the type of speciality I am working on, you can certainly find most anything by Googling, but be cautious, don't just take the first website you see and treat it as gospel, make sure who created it.  Is it from the National Institute of Health, NIH?  Is is just a grandma who thinks she knows a thing or two because she had a cholecystectomy 12 years ago.