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Medical coding an emerging and trending career option in 2020!

Vijayarani Sivakumar

Published On - April 14, 2020

Every year, millions of graduates and post-graduates join the Indian workforce, but most are only qualification-ready and lack the necessary skill sets to start on a job immediately. As a result, unemployment increases. In most cases, unemployment is a result of the prospective candidates not being tech-savvy and still being raw.

According to various industry reports, the predicted size of the Indian healthcare industry is set to be about US$ 280 billion by 2020. This is indicative of a rise in the number of hospitals and healthcare systems, thereby leading to a rise in the number of job opportunities in various fields of healthcare industry, other than core medical professions like medicine and pharmacy. This also reinforces the fact that the industry has tremendous growth opportunities for the medical BPOs/KPOs especially in the field of medical billing and coding, patient collection services, HME (Home Medical Equipment) billing and other medical data management related services.

Medical coding is fast catching up as one of the booming careers in healthcare management industry.

What is Medical Coding?

Medical coding is an healthcare affiliated industry. It acts as an accessory but is very critical in the RCM (revenue cycle management) process. The process of conversion of diagnoses and medical procedures into the international code system (ICD & CPT) is known as Medical Coding.

Who can study Medical Coding?

Anyone who is a graduate can join this field, particularly those with Life Sciences background or major in college or school will be an additional advantage to start off. An analytical and focused mind is essential for Medical Coders and it is this important ability that creates a successful coder.

What does Vcodemy Training offer?

Vcodemy is proud to offer a 4 months course in Medical Coding. It will be an online course and you can join the course and complete it from the comfort of your home or office. An AAPC certified coder will be guiding you and help you to complete it successfully.

Career prospects for a medical coder

As the number of organizations looking for medical coding specialists increases, students can look forward to a growing job market with plenty of options. The general career progression of a medical coder is as follows:

Trainee Coder

Coder

Senior Coder

 <!--[endif]-->Quality Analyst in Coding

Specialized Process Coach (Emergency Department /In-Patient / Evaluation and Management/Surgery Coder/Radiology/Anesthesia/Pathology) and many more

Team Lead

Process Lead

Manager

Assistant Manager

Senior Manager

How is the demand for medical coders, in general?

India is the preferred destination for offshore medical coding and medical billing. The healthcare industry is growing at a great pace with the demand for medical coders increasing exponentially. The demand & supply gap of certified medical coders is approximately 40% and the gap has been widening over the last two years. Being one of the most demanding sectors, medical coding is undoubtedly creating numerous job opportunities for medical enthusiasts and life sciences students.

Impact of technology on medical coding

While every other sector and job is being impacted by technology and automation, medical coding may not face many challenges in terms of human resource. The recent advance of computer assisted coding (CAC) has only helped ease the job of medical coders. It is a tool which helps improve productivity and increase accuracy of the highly critical coding process. Coding being the very first step in revenue cycle management process, automated coding is a step towards processing claims faster as well. Automated coding is in fact helping save costs easing the work of coding operations.

A suitable job for women

Medical coding is a very apt job for women. Being a desk job it is a comfortable job for women with fixed working hours. As this profession involves organizing and maintaining medical information converting them into predefined codes it is well-designed for women, as women are believed to be good at managing and organizing things.

Although healthcare outsourcing represents only 5-10% of total outsourcing market, the likeliness of growth is relatively high because of the growing demands for quality care. The need and demand for medical coding will only keep rising in the coming years.

Thus, medical coding is certainly a great career option for students looking for a rewarding, challenging, well-respected and lucrative profession