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So, I'm in school studying to be a medical assistant. Yay!
For the most part everything's going great. I've given 30 injections, did 15 urinalysis tests and two EKGs (I kinda suck at those but practice makes perfect, ne?).
What drives me insane are the insurance billing papers and the request forms that have to be filled out and sent to the lab. More specifically, it's the CPT codes that we have to include on them.
For those of you that are not familiar, CPT are procedure codes that let the lab techs know what tests to run. For example, if someone saw 87088 on the form he would know to do a culture and sensitivity test.
I realize this is important and a major part of the job so I have no objections to learning it, as tedious as I know it will be.
What aggravates me is how convoluted those books are. They are thick. Thick. Thousands of pages of codes and you have to get the right one the doctor, insurance and the lab will tear you a new one.
When our instructor told us to look up the CPT code for C & S urinalysis she explained that the culture will identify what is growing in the urine while sensitivity will determine what antibiotic will work against the pathogen. Therefore, we can't simply choose "urinalysis culture" because that will just tell the doctor what's growing - not what to prescribe the patient.
Okay, I understand the concept, but the problem is the books don't outright say "culture & sensitivity". No, that would be too easy!
So I spent a good 40 minutes tearing my hair out trying to find it. I looked in pathology - urinalysis, the 0041T section regarding urine testing, immunology and got a massive headache in the process.
Apparently, I had found the code quite quickly but I had no idea that was what I needed. The description for the code said something to the effect of "isolation of antigen and presumed isolation of the culture" or something along those lines.
How the hell was I supposed to know that was referring to sensitivity? I knew I wasn't going to find anything that gave me what I was looking for word for word, but how could I have possibly made the connection there?
"Isolation of antigen and presumed isolation of the culture" - that sounds like culture results to me - not bloody sensitivity! Arg!!!!
But what really annoys me is we already had our front office portion which was an introduction to billing and coding. Our teacher - to put it mildly - sucked. Her explanation and introduction to the ICD-9 and CPT code books was as vague as possible. It was hardly a comprehensive overview and most of it was just pointless busy work than work that would've given us a good understanding of it.
The only time I got a good understanding of just what the ICD-9 and CPT codes are for and how to use them was when a substitute came in and explained it in good detail. I wish she had been our teacher instead . . .
And - there were several instances in which we would come into class, do about 40 minutes of work, then sit around for three and a half hours because she had nothing else planned and we couldn't be excused early.
I would think that for the money we're spending at an accredited medical school she would've given us a better understanding of something that is going to be a major part of our front office job with that time instead of having us sit around bored out of our minds.
Waste of money. Waste of time. I want a refund.
Sure, I could've gotten the CPT/ICD-9 books and looked through them during that time, except that she kept them locked up and wouldn't let me. I can kind of understand why - the school had apparently lost a lot of books but honestly, I wasn't going to steal it.
So anyway, I'm annoyed, because at this point our current back office instructor expects us to know this but we just haven't had enough exposure to it. I'm not the only one struggling - it's the whole class. Thankfully the instructor is willing to help us but not without making us bang our heads on the desks in frustration first.
For the most part everything's going great. I've given 30 injections, did 15 urinalysis tests and two EKGs (I kinda suck at those but practice makes perfect, ne?).
What drives me insane are the insurance billing papers and the request forms that have to be filled out and sent to the lab. More specifically, it's the CPT codes that we have to include on them.
For those of you that are not familiar, CPT are procedure codes that let the lab techs know what tests to run. For example, if someone saw 87088 on the form he would know to do a culture and sensitivity test.
I realize this is important and a major part of the job so I have no objections to learning it, as tedious as I know it will be.
What aggravates me is how convoluted those books are. They are thick. Thick. Thousands of pages of codes and you have to get the right one the doctor, insurance and the lab will tear you a new one.
When our instructor told us to look up the CPT code for C & S urinalysis she explained that the culture will identify what is growing in the urine while sensitivity will determine what antibiotic will work against the pathogen. Therefore, we can't simply choose "urinalysis culture" because that will just tell the doctor what's growing - not what to prescribe the patient.
Okay, I understand the concept, but the problem is the books don't outright say "culture & sensitivity". No, that would be too easy!
So I spent a good 40 minutes tearing my hair out trying to find it. I looked in pathology - urinalysis, the 0041T section regarding urine testing, immunology and got a massive headache in the process.
Apparently, I had found the code quite quickly but I had no idea that was what I needed. The description for the code said something to the effect of "isolation of antigen and presumed isolation of the culture" or something along those lines.
How the hell was I supposed to know that was referring to sensitivity? I knew I wasn't going to find anything that gave me what I was looking for word for word, but how could I have possibly made the connection there?
"Isolation of antigen and presumed isolation of the culture" - that sounds like culture results to me - not bloody sensitivity! Arg!!!!
But what really annoys me is we already had our front office portion which was an introduction to billing and coding. Our teacher - to put it mildly - sucked. Her explanation and introduction to the ICD-9 and CPT code books was as vague as possible. It was hardly a comprehensive overview and most of it was just pointless busy work than work that would've given us a good understanding of it.
The only time I got a good understanding of just what the ICD-9 and CPT codes are for and how to use them was when a substitute came in and explained it in good detail. I wish she had been our teacher instead . . .
And - there were several instances in which we would come into class, do about 40 minutes of work, then sit around for three and a half hours because she had nothing else planned and we couldn't be excused early.
I would think that for the money we're spending at an accredited medical school she would've given us a better understanding of something that is going to be a major part of our front office job with that time instead of having us sit around bored out of our minds.
Waste of money. Waste of time. I want a refund.
Sure, I could've gotten the CPT/ICD-9 books and looked through them during that time, except that she kept them locked up and wouldn't let me. I can kind of understand why - the school had apparently lost a lot of books but honestly, I wasn't going to steal it.
So anyway, I'm annoyed, because at this point our current back office instructor expects us to know this but we just haven't had enough exposure to it. I'm not the only one struggling - it's the whole class. Thankfully the instructor is willing to help us but not without making us bang our heads on the desks in frustration first.
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