Vasectomy One Liners
Last week, we talked with Pamela Biffle CPC, CPC-I, CHCC, CHCO, who gave us some tips for acing the exam. She taught us so much, we’re back for more.
But first, a fun fact: Biffle is so passionate about coding she actually collects vintage CPT manuals, and her collection dates back to the groovy 1970s! You can be sure someone with that level of dedication to our profession has some good advice, so here are her 4 tips:
1. Make sure you have a sound coding foundation before you take an exam prep class
Three-day CPC exam training camps like Coding Cert.com aren’t designed to teach you coding from scratch, Biffle stresses. If you don’t have some coding knowledge before you begin the class, it won’t do you much good.
Instead, she and her fellow instructors aim to teach you how to take the test and help you fill in your coding knowledge gaps. If you’re unsure about whether you’re ready to take an exam prep training camp, you can contact a friendly customer service rep at CodingCert.com. She’ll ask you some screening questions to help you judge whether you’re ready and whether a class is a good investment for you.
2. Come up with your OWN mnemonics, or tools for remembering things
A mnemonic is an acronym or phrase that helps you remember important facts. For example, the orthopedic coding editor at Supercoder.com uses the mnemonic “Students Like The Professor To Teach Complex Hypotheses” to remember the carpal bones: Scaphoid, Lunate, Triquetral, Pisiform, Trapezium, Trapezoid, Capitate, Hamate.
But even the cleverest memory tool won’t help you unless it makes sense to you, Biffle stresses.
3. Mark up your manual as you study
We’ve discussed this general technique often on My Coding Career, and Biffle has some particularly clever tips. Example: Using the Physician Fee Schedule, mark all the codes in your CPT manuals that can take modifier 26. This is a long list of codes, so use a stamp to quickly move through your book. Students who take Biffle’s class get her list of modifier 26 codes, so they don’t have to wonder during the exam.
4. Exam Room Time Management Tip:
Complete the shortest questions first. All the questions on the exam are worth the same number of points, whether they are one-liners you can read in a flash or longer coding scenarios that take you several minutes to plow through. So you can rack up the most points if you complete the shortest questions first.
When you first get your test, find all the short answers in your test booklet first and answer them if you can, Biffle suggests. Then move to 2-line questions, and so on. Then, go to the longer op note and coding scenario questions later, starting with the specialties you’re most comfortable with.
Erin Lang Masercola, PhD, CPC, has been writing about health care law, reimbursement, compliance and HIT for ten years. Most recently, she’s been collaborating with medical coders and software engineers to create an amazing new online coding reference tool called Supercoder.com. She is a certified professional medical coder through AAPC.
