Power Building in Medical Coding and Insurance Form Completion

From The Critics

Reviewer: LouAnn Schraffenberger, MBA, RHIA, CCS, CCS-P(Univ of Illinois at Chicago School of Biomed & Health Info Mgmt)
Description: This is a workbook for practicing medical coding of patients' conditions and medical services provided in order to submit claims to insurance companies.
Purpose: The author provides assignments to perform medical coding and insurance claim form completion. Most exercises address CPT coding, HCPCS coding, and ICD-9-CM coding of diagnoses and procedures. Other exercises address the completion of insurance claims forms.
Audience: The author is a former instructor in a medical secretarial program. While the book appears to be written for medical secretaries or medical assistant students, it also could be used by other educational programs for clinical coding and health information technology classes.
Features: Parts I-IV contain assignments that are intended to develop and enhance the readers' coding skills. Part V provides exercises to complete insurance forms. Part VI contains a short glossary, a review of body systems, and an answer key for the assignments.
Assessment: This book is written at a very basic level. In the coding assignments the author includes an "advance activity challenge" that states "if you have access to a CPT, ICD, or HCPCS manual, determine the specific code." It is very difficult to teach coding to students who do not have access to the basic tools — coding books. Also noteworthy is the fact that no CPT, ICD-9-CM, or HCPCS code numbers are included in the answer key. The case studies could be good exercises for students, but a serious coding teacher would have to embellish the exercises to make them usable.

LouAnn Schraffenberger

This is a workbook for practicing medical coding of patients' conditions and medical services provided in order to submit claims to insurance companies. The author provides assignments to perform medical coding and insurance claim form completion. Most exercises address CPT coding, HCPCS coding, and ICD-9-CM coding of diagnoses and procedures. Other exercises address the completion of insurance claims forms. The author is a former instructor in a medical secretarial program. While the book appears to be written for medical secretaries or medical assistant students, it also could be used by other educational programs for clinical coding and health information technology classes. Parts I-IV contain assignments that are intended to develop and enhance the readers' coding skills. Part V provides exercises to complete insurance forms. Part VI contains a short glossary, a review of body systems, and an answer key for the assignments. This book is written at a very basic level. In the coding assignments the author includes an ""advance activity challenge"" that states ""if you have access to a CPT, ICD, or HCPCS manual, determine the specific code."" It is very difficult to teach coding to students who do not have access to the basic tools -- coding books. Also noteworthy is the fact that no CPT, ICD-9-CM, or HCPCS code numbers are included in the answer key. The case studies could be good exercises for students, but a serious coding teacher would have to embellish the exercises to make them usable.

2 Stars from Doody