MEDICAL BILLING CAREER

JUMPSTART YOUR FUTURE WITH A MEDICAL BILLING CAREER

Could Medical Billing Be Your Future Career?

If you find yourself unemployed or recently laid off from your job because of the global economic recession, do not lose hope. While various industries continue to contract and downsize, the healthcare industry continues to grow. No matter what condition the economy is in, the healthcare industry has stood its ground. That is why even amidst the global downturn of the world’s economy, more and more individuals are being saved from unemployment. To this date, the healthcare industry has been able to provide numerous job opportunities to cushion the effects of the recession.

What job opportunities are available?

Every hospital, clinic, private practitioner, and other healthcare provider all need to keep records. These records include their patients’ files, diagnosis and prescriptions, billing, receipts, and insurance claims, among others. In the past, record filing was hand-written or typewritten and individually filed manually but because of the surge of patients in hospitals and private clinics, filing all this paperwork has become a very taxing job for healthcare providers. Fortunately, with the aid of various

computer software, various healthcare providers could now electronically file or transcribe all this paperwork. However, because doctors and other physicians don’t have much time to do this, they need other individuals to do things for them.
There are various jobs you can choose from. One of the most promising is in medical billing.

What is medical billing all about?

Medical billing is really simple once you have gained the necessary tools to be able to do it well. Basically, what a medical billing specialist does is s/he encodes, using a universal alphanumeric coding system, the service/s provided by the doctor/physician to the patient. These codes are then entered to a medical billing software and sent to a clearinghouse who then sends it to the insurance company that reimburses the healthcare provider. Your role as a medical billing specialist is to correctly encode the diagnosis and procedure done by the physician in order to ensure a faster turnaround time of the reimbursement. Cashflow would take around 1-2 weeks with electronic medical billing as opposed to manually-filed billing which can take as long as a month.
A medical billing career can provide you with other opportunities especially if you choose to specialize in any one sub-field. You can opt to become a patient account representative, a billing coordinator, reimbursement specialist or claims assistant professional or you may also want to handle, process, and review medical claims as a medical office secretary.

What are the benefits of a medical billing career?

Apart from a lucrative salary that usually ranges from $30,000 – $100,000, more and more individuals are attracted to the medical billing profession because it:
- can be done at the comfort of one’s home
- requires a relatively small start-up capital
- requires only a computer, a phone and/or fax line, a reliable internet connection, a reliable software and at least 9-months training depending on the program
- it allows people to set their own pace/ schedule or influence it

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