I am both honored and excited to be asked to blog for the new HI Careers website. As a self-confessed “super coder geek” I love to share my excitement about my chosen career with others and try to help them break into what I know can be a satisfying and rewarding career experience. I am an RHIT and dually certified coder through AHIMA and the AAPC. I am also an ACE member through AHIMA and currently serve as a first-year director for the Colorado Health Information Management Association. In my spare time, I facilitate the Denver-based novice-to-professional networking group on Facebook, The Coder Coach, and I also pen a Coder Coach blog (http://www.codercoach.blogspot.com/).
Like most people who choose HIM, I have to say that this career was not my idea. I did not grow up saying, “I want to be an HIM professional and coder.” I wanted to be a movie star or a rock star or (more realistically) a teacher. Well, when a four year university wasn’t in the cards, community college became my reality. HIM was actually my mother’s idea - I am a second generation RHIT and she thought I would really like the HIM field. I hate it that she always seems to be right!
I graduated from an RHIT program in 1995 and secured my first job as a coder at the facility where I did my second internship. I started as an emergency department coder and worked my way up to outpatient surgeries and finally inpatient. I worked hard and took my first supervisory job after only a few years. After only 6 years of experience, I made the leap into coding consulting where I’ve been happily working for the last 9+ years.
I currently work for The Wilshire Group as the Senior Consultant of Training and Education. That is a broad job title that allows me to fulfill various coding and hospital revenue cycle education needs for my clients. So at least I fulfilled part of my childhood dream of being a teacher (I’m still working on movie/rock star part!). I recently became certified as an ICD-10-CM/PCS trainer through AHIMA and see so many challenges for me professionally in training a new coding system and for novices to break into the industry.
My mantra for anyone who wants to break into the HIM field is get certified, network, be persistent, and network some more. It can be tough to get started in this industry, but it’s so worth it! I look forward to sharing some of my ideas and tidbits of information in upcoming posts. Best of luck to all of you pursuing a career in HIM!