Please help me make a career decision!

angel337, MSN, RN · Apr 2, 2009

medical coding does not require a bachelors degree or an RN license so those jobs are very competitive, especially for stay at home mothers. people that do medical coding and medical transcrption are finding alot of those jobs to be outsourced. you say your back and knees are bad, can you work for an insurance company?? they require at least one year bedside nursing experience and the nursing positions they have are very specific to a nursing degree.

Magsulfate, BSN, RN · Apr 2, 2009

I just can't see someone with your education and your experience changing your career to medical coder/biller. That is a big step down.

I understand that your knees are bad, but there are plenty of sit down nursing positions... you could teach, couldn't you? Find out if you can. I'm not sure if your degree is from another country, or if that will affect you being able to teach.

Insurance companies hire RN's ... also maybe an RN case manager? That is an office job.

I would research nursing jobs and find one that is less stress on my body before I would go back to school to take a step down to medical coder.

Teebee5 · Apr 2, 2009

Don't take the medical coder class. Even if in the end you decide to change your career its not worth taking that class.

Up here in Canada those jobs are being out sourced. I know 5 different friends and other stay at home moms who did this course thinking they would make enough money to stay at home. They paid upwards of $4000 dollars to take the course online ( on lady spent $7500 on a class version ) all to graduate and find out that to work in the hospital you needed a different certificate and that they ended up work for a few doctors offices, but ended up losing that work to outsourcing.

So please, consider all options before doing something that might not be worth your time, effort and money.

Good luck!

sunray12 · Apr 2, 2009

Ahima.org has the basic coding course online - CCA - for 2K. The course is 12 modules and is supposed to take about 15 months to complete. Most community colleges in my state also have a Health Information Management degree or certificate - you can sign up for one of those if you prefer to go on campus. It involves some of the same prereqs as nursing and you have to apply to get into the program just like applying for nursing school.

I don't have any experience in HIM so I can't tell you what it's like , and hopefully someone else who's in the field will see this thread and respond. I had a subscription to a HIM magazine for a while and I do know that most companies that hire remote coders require one or more years of on-site experience and usually they want it to be in an acute setting. It's hard to find a job without experience (plenty of new grad nurses can relate to this). With the move to electronic records more jobs will probably open up eventually. The advantage to going to school in campus is that those programs usually have an internship requirement and your internship might lead to an opportunity for a job. If you go online you'll have to find internship or job opportunities on your own and that can be hard.

If you start out at the associate's level you can also move on to get your Bachelor's in Health Information Management or alternatively you could look at getting your MSN in Nurse Informatics, Administration or Nurse Educator, etc.