Tips for Getting the Most From the Career Services Department

To ensure that you get the most out of the Career Services Department, Medical Billing and Coding Blog has outlined some of the important benefits of the department.  Here are a few tips in taking advantage of all that Career Services has to offer:

Assistance with Resume Writing

Your resume is one of the most important documents in your job search. Having a professional, well-written, and neatly organized resume can go a long way in impressing your potential employer. The Career Services Department has specialists who can walk you through the resume writing process, and ensure that you present yourself well to potential employers.

Interviewing Tips

The Career Services Department also specialize in teaching crucial career tips, such as offering mock interviews and advice on “dressing for success”. It is extremely important to enter an interview prepared and confident in your candidacy for the position, and our Career Services Department focuses on preparing students for these critical interviews.

Job Opportunities

Where are the jobs available? This is the most important question when beginning your job search. Luckily, the Career Services Department remains well-informed on what positions employers are hiring, and the type of candidates for which they are searching. This is another reason why it is imperative for you to remain connected to the Career Services Department – they are in the loop on job information, and can help you apply to the right positions for you.

Accounting Tips for Self-Employed Billers and Coders with Home Offices

Did the word “deduction!” jump into your mind the minute you thought about opening a home office? If so, you are thinking wisely, because a home office provides many great opportunities to deduct business expenses from your taxes.

But be careful. The IRS has some requirements – and traps – waiting for people who break the rules about what can be deducted.  So be sure to follow these steps to avoid trouble.

Read what the IRS has to say. Download Business Use of Your Home, a guide that is published by the Internal Revenue Service. It spells out which expenses are deductible, how much of your home you can deduct as a home office, and more. You’ll also find some unpleasant surprises. Example: If you sell your home for a profit after you’ve taking deductions for a home office in it, you could end up paying capital gains tax on your business. (See page 14 of Business Use of Your Home.)

Talk over your plans with your accountant or tax preparer. Your strategy for taking home-office deductions will vary according to whether you own your home or rent, the physical layout of your home, the amount of time you intend to stay in your current residence, and other factors.

Keep complete records of all deductible expenses. A file cabinet is your best friend in this area. Set up files for office expenses, travel expenses, and all other categories. Also: Print out and file records of Internet purchases, invoices and other electronic documents that you will need to complete your taxes. Preparing your taxes will be much easier if you have all your records in one place.

If you have multiple clients, keep careful records for each of them. You will need to track the income for each of them – as well as expenses that apply uniquely to them – separately. Your accountant or tax preparer can help you set up filing categories to keep everything straight.

NY Times: Medical Offices and Hospitals That Use Electronic Medical Records To Receive Bonuses

According to a December 30, 2009 article in the NY Times, entitled “Bonus Planned for Digital Medical Records”, Medicare officials have outlined a plan to reward medical offices and hospitals that maintain systems of electronic medical records. Under the proposed stimulus, billions of dollars will be handed out across the country to healthcare providers that keep updated digital medical records of their patients. The announcement is just a proposal, however, and the plan does not expect to be completed until the spring.

The article features a quote from David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health information technology, who says that “Widespread adoptions of electronic health records holds great promise for improving health care quality, efficiency, and patient safety”.

The proposed plan will provide bonus payments to health care professionals who use electronic medical records for at least 80 percent of their medical instructions. These incentives will facilitate America’s full transfer to electronic medical records, which President Obama has promised by 2014.  According to Obama administration officials, using digital health records will reduce costly medical errors and duplicate testing.

The national implementation of electronic medical records will also result with a high demand for healthcare technology professionals, such as medical billing and coding specialists, who can help medical offices and hospitals maintain these systems of electronic medical records.

How to Stay Focused and Strong While Working and Studying Alone

Last Monday’s post covered some strategies for making the transition to working at home.  This week, let’s explore some of the same concepts in more depth, with an emphasis on staying focused when you are working and studying alone.

• Work in dedicated time blocks. Don’t check your email or send text messages during your working or studying period.  Work time should be work time.

• Explain to family members that you should not be interrupted.  A student who is also a mother explains, “I took me a week to train my kids not to interrupt me. I told them they could only knock on the door if somebody was dying.”

• Get away to a quiet place. Many students report that their concentration is best in a public library,  on a park bench,  or in a vacant conference room at work.  So try to get away from it all.

• Beware of “crash” foods. A cup of high-test coffee or a bowl of sugary cereal might start your day on an energy high, but you will probably crash afterwards.  Many students and home workers report that solid foods like almonds, granola bars, or fruit do a better job of sustaining energy. Try eating them in small quantities throughout your working and studying hours.

• Get rid of eye strain in your work area. One simple strategy is to place your computer so it is not between you and a bright window. In that position, you have to squint to see your screen, which causes fatigue. Better: Sit with your back to the window and your computer in front of you.
• Also: Turn off your computer and look at your computer screen.  If you see bright reflections on it from windows or lights, move your computer to eliminate them.  They are contributing to eyestrain and fatigue.

And then there’s the greatest fatigue-fighter of all . . .

Make sure you are getting enough sleep. Sounds logical, right? But how much sleep is enough?  To find out, read Sleep, Performance and the Workplace, a report from the National Sleep Foundation.

They’re Hiring! Five Overlooked Places to Look for Work as a Medical Biller and Coder

As a Biller and Coder, you may think that the only opportunity you may have is to sit at a desk from 9-5, Monday through Friday, doing the same thing day in and day out. Well, you couldn’t be more wrong!

There are many career opportunities out there for certified Medical Billers and Coders that are often overlooked. Here are some of those opportunities:

Being an Instructor—Specialty specific schools are always looking for certified Coders to teach Medical Billing and Coding; this can be a very rewarding career for a biller and coder.

Attorneys—Many Medical Attorneys are looking for qualified Coders for positions such as collections and recuperating “lost” or “unpaid” monies.

Forensics—Love the show?  Well, now, as a certified Biller and Coder, you can join their team, tracking reimbursement for various medical services.

Auditing—These positions are needed in hospitals and outpatient settings, and if you are lucky, many auditing companies send certified Billers and Coders all over the U.S. to audit medical records; this ensures that physicians are coding to the highest level and obtaining correct reimbursements.

Home Business—After “paying your dues,” you, as a certified Biller and Coder, could open your own home business, submitting claims and posting reimbursements from the insurance carriers.

As a certified Biller and Coder, you have many opportunities out there that are just waiting for the right person.  Could that person be you?

Do You Have What it Takes to Work from Home?

What does it take to work at home? What are the biggest mistakes to avoid?

We asked those questions to a man who has worked from his home office for 20 years.  Here’s his advice on getting the most from working at home:

• Plan to go through a transition period. Don’t expect to like home work right away. It can take six months or a year to get the feel for it.

• Remember, you are going to get a ton of work done quickly. When you work from home, there are no time-wasting meetings, no chatting at the water cooler.  “In my first year at home,” our home-working pro explains, “I would be tired by noon, wondering `Why did I run out of steam?’ It was because I had already done as much work as I would have done in a full day in my old office setting.” His solution? “After three or four hours of work, I head to the gym for a workout. Then I come back refreshed in the afternoon.”

• Make the most of your peak mental hours. It can be a good idea to tackle intensive work early in the day, then use the afternoon for keeping records, filing papers and other routine tasks that require less mental edge.

• Don’t chat and socialize during your work time. “When I first started working at home, I was lonely,” our expert explains. “I would have long personal chats with the FedEx delivery person, telemarketers, everybody.”  Now he keeps those contacts short and calls a real friend for a cool-down chat after his day’s work is finished.

• Work in time blocks. For example, you can do your computer inputting for three uninterrupted hours every morning, then check your email for 30 minutes – but don’t mix up the two. Working without interruption dramatically boosts productivity.

Five Tactics that Can Help You Get the Job You Want

CNNMoney.com released an interactive slideshow that provides several different key factors in locating and getting hired at the job that you want. The presentation, created by Jia Lynn Yang in April, 2009, is called “How to Get a Job”, and is “an interactive guide to navigating the worst job market of your lifetime”.  We have broken down the guide into five major points that you should follow in locating, and securing, the right job for you.

Target Your Search

When searching for a job it is very important that you narrow down your options so that you are applying to positions that best fit your skill set. You should apply to places at which you are well-suited and will thrive, making you an obvious choice for the position.

Leverage Your Networks

After you locate a potential employer, reach out to anyone you know who can prepare you for the interview. The more advice you get from people in, or with knowledge of, the industry, the better off you will be. Do your own research as well, so you enter the interview as prepared as possible to impress the interviewer, and convince them that you are right for the job.

Match Your Skills to Their Needs

Once you familiarize yourself with your potential employer, and what they are looking for in an applicant, make sure you cater your resume and experiences to meet their specific needs. If you are applying for a job as an administrative assistant in a medical office (like many billers and coders do), be sure to focus your discussion on your strong organizational and administrative skills. Optimizing your selling points and resume to meet the needs of your employer will go a long way in getting hired.

Is Medical Billing and Coding the Right Career for You?

Are You Ready to Advance Your Career? is a fun, informative self-test that’s available free online at Queendom.com. If you take it, you’ll find that it delivers some useful perspective on where your abilities could take you in professional life.

We took the test and liked it. It got us thinking. So we asked 10 medical biller and coders to name the traits that have helped them achieve success in their careers. Here are the five qualities they named most often. If you possess them, a career in medical billing and coding could be a good choice for you.

Trait #1: The ability to work on your own, without close supervision. This trait was named by every medical biller and coder we polled.

Trait #2: The ability to focus, finish up and follow through on assignments.

Trait #3: Good organizational skills and the ability to calmly handle a backlog of work.

Trait #4: A willingness to work flexible hours.

Trait #5: Interest in working at home, or in starting a company. (Six of the people we polled are thinking about starting their own home-based businesses to process medical claims.)

Interesting: Only four of the 10 people we polled cited computer skills as being critical to success, and only three people cited medical knowledge. “Those are skills you learn in school,” one person told us, “you don’t need them before you decide to train for the profession.”

We’d like to hear from you about this topic. If you’re a professional medical biller and coder, what skills and qualities have helped you succeed?

How to Stand Out in Career Interviews

Your goal in a job interview is to show that you fit in, right?  No, wrong, according to Debra Benton, a top leadership coach and author of CEO Material: How to Be a Leader in Any Organization and other bestselling books.

According to Benton, your goal should be to stand out in interviews, not fit in. Here’s her advice on how you can make that happen.

Make a winning first impression. Walk in tall, make eye contact, shake hands, and say something like, “I am pleased to meet you. How are you today?”  Show your strength from the beginning.

Control the flow of questions. If the interviewer says, “Tell me about yourself,” say, “Shall I tell you about my family or my work life first?” By influencing the interview in this way, you stand out from candidates who simply answer questions one at a time.

Tell memorable stories that the interviewer can repeat about you. You didn’t just “attend school.” You went because three of your high school teachers (or your minister or the members of your softball team) believed in you and sponsored you. Tell stories! They make you come alive in the mind of your interviewer – and in the minds of the people he or she talks to about you.

Ask a lot of questions. The more curious and interested you are, the more you learn about the company. And be sure to ask these three questions, in your own words:

1. “What does your company want to achieve?”
2. “What are you doing well now that you want to maintain?”
3. “What problems do you want to avoid?”

These questions show that you will be a contributor, not just another name on the payroll.

IBM Smarter Planet: Electronic Health Records for Evolving Healthcare

Electronic Medical Records are revolutionizing healthcare in America. The system will help create a more efficient system of care that will benefit both doctors and patients. Check out this video from IBM that gives some great information on electronic medical records, and provides some  valuable footage of digital records in action.

more about “IBM Smarter Planet: Electronic Health…“, posted with vodpod