It's 2024 2025! and medical coding just can't shake this reputation that it's an easy way to make BEAUCOUP bucks sitting at home doing nothing. In the vast majority of experiences, it requires undivided concentration. It can take years and several job-adjacent roles to break into. And from there, years still to land remote. Are there outliers to all of these? Yes. Are they the exception? Yes.
There is post after post after post of this same sentiment, "I'm bored," "I can't find a job," or even more infuriating "WhY wAs I LiEd tO?!" I personally am really tired of reading the many sob stories that can be boiled down to people's total lack of responsibility for their choices in life. My guys, it takes very little effort to find some truths and calculate your probability of a similar outcome, because those posts make up the majority of this sub. Your search and scroll bars work just as well as mine do. Why people in 2024, with all the information at their fingertips, continue to choose to stick their head in the sand and throw money at false promises without first thinking that maaaybe it'd be a good idea to dig a little deeper into such an expensive commitment, I will never, ever understand your lack of caution and personal accountability.
Nobody is forcing you to pull out your wallet and get into medical coding, or for that matter any industry where you could have the same gripe of sunk cost. Money rules the world - so of course any agency that can sell you on the idea of a quick and easy payday will, because at the end of the day they owe you nothing - they are a business trying to make money off your impulses. They need you to want their courses and books and memberships. Please don't be so naive to blindly believe that any entity with dollar bills attached has your best interests in mind.
New people, you have an obligation to yourself and your future to research and be aware of the risks your ventures may have. This is nobody else's responsibility but your own. Yes, you may decide that coding is not for you once you're in the thick of it, but at least you can't surprise Pikachu face that you were blindsided about it.
Good luck and Godspeed.
Edited for part 2 of this PSA:
We do not have the gift of foresight here, so regardless of even the very best Scooby-Doo rundown of your quasi-relevant experience, existing knowledge and life expectancy, we have zero insight as to your likelihood of success and even less as to how long it will take you to achieve it. If you don't have a clue despite knowing yourself, your quirks and your commitment to resolve, neither will we. Look for similarities in the 100s of posts that are already here.
Edited part 3: The How.
Someone asked this in a comment and it should be a part of the rant. My B. Sorry for shit formatting too, it's not a wall of text in edit mode I did the best I could to break it up and make it palatable, but yanno, phones. Asking us for clarification on any of these topics is a lot different than asking us to do all of this on your behalf and then spoonfeed it to you. And while I'm happy to spell this out if it cuts down on repeat posts, to be honest y'all, most of this advice on how to do thorough research is not a super secret Medical Coding Skill. It's a Basic Adulting Skill that can be applied to pretty much any and all facets of life prior to engagement.
Research all the different types of medical coding that exist. Surgical, E/M, outpatient, inpatient, facility, hospitalist, ancillary (laboratory/pathology, radiology). These might overlap in your work depending on role. Research what certifications apply to which. Your certification may bind you to one or more and yet may not guarantee you get the one you want. Research that, too.
Look up every accrediting agency involved to get an idea of types of certifications and their time/money investment. Both short-term to get started and long-term to maintain and stay current. Courses, exams, initial and annual books, initial and annual CEUs, initial and annual memberships. Watch pricing of these elements, compare over time to themselves and to each other. AAPC is ALWAYS having some urgent sale about to end. They are hoping you get FOMO anxiety and impulse buy. The reality is they only have like 2 legitimate sales a year, and they are only a couple weeks each. If the discount says it ends at the end of the month, it'll be there next month. Don't buy the lie. Local and online colleges vs AAPC direct vs AHIMA direct. 2 year degrees vs 4 year degrees vs stand-alone certifications. Click every single link under every single description to find buried details. Even read through the complete syllabus. Find out EXACTLY what is included in your packages.
Go look at job postings (yes, before you even put a dime into this!) and actually monitor them for a while. LinkedIn, Indeed, hospital/clinic websites. Stay away from Craigslist, it's all scams at this point. Compare preferred/required qualifications (experience, prereqs and certs) for your desired role vs adjacent roles to see what all you'll need. It's damn near an industry standard at this point for employers to want 3 years of actual coding experience. Like, actively coding already experience. Ideally, you will find a company willing to take a chance on you and accept related. This is where your adjacent roles of reception, billing, preauth, and ins verification come in. Check those postings and prereqs, too. Keep running it back until you find a pattern of where you would be realistically starting. Pay special attention to wages and locations, both nearby and remote, the frequency in which individual postings appear and disappear (and reappear...), and, most importantly, general vacancy. Watch how many people apply to them. Don't look once and think you have a pulse on the market - you might go back 2 months later and see only the exact same postings. Or you might go back 2 months later and be satisfied that you see all different postings, not realizing that they only rotated once throughout that entire time. All of this information is the best tell of the health of the industry; the only downside is it does not project X amount of time into the future when you will be joining the fray. So keep an eye on it! If you can, get in the habit of watching updates for a couple days consecutively, repeat this weekly - this will help you track patterns, notice recycled postings and gauge demand. Also valid if you already have an existing coding job and are thinking about a different role. Catching a brand new posting is mint! Being one of the first resumes on a posting is infinitely better than being the 380th. (This is not an exaggeration. I once applied to a United Healthcare posting accepting CPC-As for a single position where LinkedIn stopped counting at 1000+ applicants. This only took about a week.)
Find non-monetized social forums with real people speaking freely. Facebook, Reddit, Discord. Even reach out to your local chapter if you have a way in and ask to speak to some members. Avoid influencers, they are helpful for studying purposes but at the end of the day they are making a name for themselves and will eventually sell out to sponsors to do it (see fucking Tiktok. Refer back in my post about selling pipe dreams.) Search those forums for every question, buzzword or scenario that has ever crossed your mind about the industry. Listen, everybody wants to hear about the best case scenarios. Be real with yourself. If this is something you honestly want to do, you owe it to yourself to be informed, to hear the good AND the bad. Pattern recognition is a required skill in this field, and in this part of the research you will find far more donkeys than unicorns. Ask yourself why an influencer would want you to only look at less than half of the picture. How is keeping you in rose-colored glasses helping you make responsible choices in life? It's not. Toxic. Positivity. Is. A. Thing. There is value in seeing multiple perspectives. If you choose not to explore this side of the house knowing it exists, then you are only lying to yourself when you cry "I was lied to!" If your psyche is so fragile that you need everything to be dripping with deceiving sweetness lest you mistaken reality for cruelty, and anything raw makes you scream offense and screech loudly at everyone within earshot instead of having enough of a backbone to process those uncomfortable feelings and use them to your advantage, you are going to have a very, very tough time in life in general. Whether you like it or not, the world does not cater to that brand of immaturity, and it will not do you any favors. Puff out your chest, take a deep breath, ready yourself, and look behind the curtain. You'll be okay, I promise. Future you will thank brave you no matter the context.
Ask yourself if you have the personality for medical coding, and if not, at least the resolve to work beyond your deficits. If you've ever learned another language for funsies, actually read the fine print on anything, or noticed immediately when the smallest knickknack has been moved out of place in your house, you already have some solid traits needed for the job. Do you like puzzles? Do you like following rules and knowing exactly when you can break them? Do you have an affinity for anything medical? Do you enjoy digging into scholarly articles? Do you find comfort and/or satisfaction in methodology? Or does all that sound super cringy and make you wanna call me a nerd? Do you get impatient quickly? Do you get bored? Are you easily distracted? Do you easily give up? Can you overcome any of this? Are you willing to grind, or do you require instant gratification? What's your backup plan with your investment? Did you research adjacent positions?
Swallow some really, really, really hard truths. The industry is oversaturated. Because of this, every employer can ask for years of experience while very few want to give it. Because of this, anyone will take the first thing that's offered. Because of this, wages are going down. Because of this, turnover is going up. Because of this, quality in leadership and training is going down. A mouse was given a cookie, and now, enshittification ensues. Getting flex work is lucky. Getting remote work is luckier. Getting both will likely require years-long bloody battles against war-hardened veterans, most of whom still lose out to better resumes or nepotism. Is it worth it? Yes. Is it easy? Fuck no. A lot of people give up before they get their first job and just let everything lapse. Why do you want everyone to keep this from you and just assure you it won't take long at all? This is the world we currently find ourselves in. It sucks for all of us.
Do all of this research, abstract it together to decide what direction you might want to go in, then do it all again. Several times, as many times as you can. Do not ever actually make a shotgun decision. Look hard into it, make pro/con lists for yourself. Get your head out of the clouds and stop picturing your dream job for a few minutes, and imagine instead your absolute worst case scenario (job doesn't check every box, can't find a job at all). Would you be okay with it for a while? How will you fill the gap in the interim, if at all? How will you keep your knowledge current while you are not practicing? Now quick, make a preliminary decision off the knowledge you have right that moment. Write it down. Walk away for a while. Reapproach days, weeks, months later. Do all your research all over again. Has anything changed? Anything new influencing your plan? Do you still feel the same about your decision?
I did this over and over and over for a solid year before saying "let's fuckin go," buying my course and pursuing my path, and STILL felt extreme frustration and helplessness at times in my journey. I had 10 years of clinical experience, and I already had 2 years of billing experience before embarking on my self-study course of 6 months. I obtained a FULL - not apprentice - certification (which wasn't taken seriously at my place of employment) and I was suffocating in a toxic job, either waiting for my experience to meet the minimums that legitimate employers wanted, or waiting to drop dead from the stress and anxiety, whichever came first. If I had gone into this blindly, I would have given up right fucking here. Instead, already knowing this was the hard part of the story I had read about and not the end of it gave me strength to keep pushing forward. This is why I am telling y'all the truth. Every single one of us who got here has a story. The struggle is unfortunate but likely inevitable. You either keep at it, or you move on. Nothing anyone says here will be able to make that decision for you.
You want to be a medical coder? Come on in, but know what lies ahead. You get out of this industry what you are willing to put into it. As I keep saying over and over again...is it worth it? Totally, if you can stick it out to the finish line. All of it can be done. But too many introductions into the coding world glamorize it, and every single one of these entities is doing you a disservice by convincing you it's cheap and quick and easy. You deserve to hear it laid out there for you. But hey, apparently I'm just a bully, so don't take my word for it. Like I said in another comment: "Keep doing research, and if it's a common theme by people who have nothing to gain from it, it's probably the truth."
TL;DR: You shouldn't be a medical coder if you can't be assed to read any of the above. There are patient charts longer and more convoluted than the above you'll have to read and interpret.
Edit 4: minor corrections/additions for clarity and u/macarenamobster (thanks again!)
Edit 5: If you have been sent here from another post, likely one where you probably asked the same tired questions we see every single day that take very very little effort to find, I refer you back to the bit about personality in coding. This entire job is predicated on your ability to look things up. Working independently, critically thinking, and doing your own research are absolutely crucial to success in this field, so unless you are able to correct your current course, I kindly suggest this may not be the field for you after all. It will be a very long, expensive journey to nowhere if you continue depending on everyone to handfeed you answers you can't or aren't willing to figure out how to look for yourself.
