Nursing Students NP Students
Published Nov 27, 2011
NPmimzy75
35 Posts
Any clues on how to study for the billing and coding section listed in the content outline.
I get the levels of exam (focused vs comprehensive) but what about the section on Health Care Policy- health care financing (billing, coding, reimbursement, third party payors).
I'm guessing there would be no specific ICD9 code questions, but what about CMS codes (99231, 99232) and the exam requirements in each level...or am I getting too deep?
DRG's maybe?
Any help on this portion of the test would be great, I don't know what to study or where to look for information! So scared this non-clinical section is going to cause me to fail.
Corey Narry, MSN, RN, NP
8 Articles; 4,370 Posts
See, I wish certification exams stay away from "Health Care Delivery" and "Professional Responsibility" questions and just focus on the clinical stuff. It's been a while since I took ANCC's ACNP-BC exam and I do not recall questions like these on my test...or maybe I guessed on them because there wasn't a lot of such questions that I was pretty sure my score wouldn't suffer if I didn't get them right, and I did get a good final score . However, the Test Content Outline have been revised through the years and it looks like you have a total of 42 questions (out of 150) that may ask about billing, coding, or reimbursement among other things (regulatory stuff, accreditation, licensure, liability, ethics, etc.). These are topics that you can read up on your own even by doing a google search. As far as CPT codes 99231 through 99233, they apply in acute care as codes used to bill for initial and subsequent hospital visits or E/M Services. The complexity of the E/M and the details required in the documentation go up as the CPT numbers increase.
Here's a website that appears to give a simple breakdown of the requirements for those CPT codes: http://medicare.fcso.com/wrapped/149048.asp
http://medicare.fcso.com/wrapped/149046.asp
Well I passed!!!!! I think over half of the test was on "therapeutic communication". I had no idea how I was doing the entire time, it was very nerve racking. I could narrow those questions down to 2 good choices then it was a guessing game. It's hard to know what you would say to a patient that you only know by 2 sentences of information.
I'm kind of offended by these questions. I think at this level of practice most of us are able to communicate "therapeutically" or we probably would be here. Especially for the acute care test, how about find out if we can keep them from dying then we'll focus on talking to them about their situation.
Just glad it's over and never want to do it again! Time to turn my brain off for a few weeks then start my new job!
:beer:
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
CCRNDiva, BSN, RN
365 Posts
Congratulations!!! You deserve some serious down time now!! :yelclap::yelclap::yelclap: