Exploring Pathways for Advancing Your Medical Billing and Coding Career

Medical Coder

Medical coders add standardized codes for health information such as diagnoses, treatments, and visits to patient records. To become a medical coder, you must be:

• Familiar with the complex medical terms and acronyms in patients’ charts
• Familiar with the standard coding systems, such as CPT and ICD-10 codes
• Aware of medicine and medical terms enough to identify the proper codes
• On top of learning the software packages that providers use for processing medical records.
• Able to keep up with any changes

You can get an entry-level job with a certificate program or certification exam preparation course. However, an associate or bachelor degree program will give you more context.

• Required Education: Certificate program
• Recommended Education: Associate degree
• Education Timeline: Less than 1 year-2 years
• Experience Required: None
• Average Annual Pay: $49,068 (Payscale, October 2023)

Medical Biller

As the title implies, this role focuses on payment. Medical billers:

• Ensure that medical bills are accurate
• Identify the proper payer or group of payers,
• Ensure that bills are sent
• Track the progress of payment
• Process payments
• Work with patients and payers on required adjustments as needed

Because hospital stays in particular can involve hundreds of different items to charge, you must have strong attention to detail and be able to identify potential issues or errors.

• Required Education: Certificate program
• Recommended Education: Associate degree
• Education Timeline: Less than 1 year-2 years
• Experience Required: None
• Average Annual Pay: $45,354 (Payscale, October 2023)

Medical Coding Auditor

Medical coding auditing emphasizes reviewing existing medical coding for errors. Therefore, the role requires an extensive knowledge of medical coding and areas where medical coders may be more prone to errors.

Like all medical billing and coding careers — but to an even greater extent — the role requires:

• Keeping up to date with changes in different coding systems
• Knowledge of coding
• Excellent attention to detail
• The ability to keep focused on details throughout the work day.

• Required Education: Certificate program
• Recommended Education: Associate degree
• Education Timeline: Less than 1 year-2 years
• Experience Required: None
• Average Annual Pay: $61,959 (Payscale, October 2023)

Coding Manager

Coding management can be the next step in a medical billing and coding career, by combining your skill as a coder with leadership skills. Coding managers must learn on the job, think in terms of the broad context of the team’s or organization’s needs, and become a resource for others.

Coding managers, well, manage coding. Additional responsibilities include:

• Managing staff
• Tackling the more difficult coding questions
• Ensuring the smooth functioning of the coding team

In addition to coding expertise, you will need leadership and people skills for this role.

• Required Education: Bachelor's degree
• Recommended Education: Master's degree
• Education Timeline: 4-6 years
• Experience Required: More than 5 years

Medical Billing Manager

Medical billing management is one of the medical billing and coding career options that lets you work in a healthcare setting or for a payer, such as an insurance company.

You can develop your skills and readiness from your coding experience by learning more about the context, excelling in communication and customer service, and understanding the role of other departments.

Because of the high level of financial responsibility, many employers prefer or require extensive experience and education for this role, as well as expertise in the technical aspects of billing.

In addition to overseeing medical billing functions, medical billing managers may work extensively with other departments, such as IT, finance, and operations to ensure that billing runs smoothly.

• Required Education: Bachelor’s degree
• Recommended Education: Master’s degree
• Education Timeline: 4-6 years
• Experience Required: More than 5 years

Director of Revenue Cycle Management

Revenue cycle management can be a very rewarding medical billing and coding career if you enjoy systems thinking and collaborating with other functions and teams.

The director of revenue cycle management is typically responsible for leading multiple functions related to payments, including staff management and quality oversight.

Due to the high level of responsibility, this role often calls for multiple years of medical billing and coding career successes. While it typically does not require hands-on billing and coding experience, a billing and coding career can develop the leadership skills you need.

• Required Education: Bachelor's degree
• Recommended Education: Master's degree
• Education Timeline: 4-6 years
• Experience Required: More than 5 years

Patient Accounts Director

With advanced experience and education, a medical billing and coding career can lead to becoming a patient accounts director. A patient accounts director is responsible for oversight of all functions related to billing related to patients, including accurate bills, payer relations, collections, and tracking of revenue.

This role is vital to a hospital or insurance company's cash flow, so you must understand all of the financial, technical, and regulatory aspects of billing. You must be able to focus on detail and understand how your organization’s financial functions work and interact.

• Required Education: Bachelor's degree
• Recommended Education: Master's degree
• Education Timeline: 4-6 years
• Experience Required: More than 5 years
• Average Annual Pay: (Payscale, October 2023)

Medical and Health Services Managers

Not all medical billing and coding careers continue solely in financial departments or teams. As you develop administrative experience in billing or coding, you may be able to use your growing expertise in healthcare to become a medical and health services manager.

In this role, you can manage a team, department, or function within a healthcare setting, not just finance.

The skills you developed in billing and coding (attention to detail, understanding how to solve problems and to prevent them in the future) can be a strength.These might support clinical work, in fields such as information technology or operations.

• Required Education: Bachelor's degree
• Recommended Education: Master's degree
• Education Timeline: 4-6 years
• Experience Required: Less than 5 years
• Average Annual Pay: (BLS, May 2022)

Office Manager

Office managers use their administrative, organizational, and interpersonal skills to ensure that businesses function smoothly. The level of required education and experience to be a business manager or office manager varies from organization to organization, often depending on size.

The attention to detail and ability to adapt to changes in regulations or technology that can help you succeed in a medical billing and coding career can also apply to these roles.

• Required Education: Associate degree
• Recommended Education: Bachelor's degree
• Education Timeline: 2-4 years
• Experience Required: More than 2 years

Compliance Auditor

Careers in medical billing and coding require precise knowledge of rules, standards, and regulations, and the ability to adapt to changes in these codes.

These skills can transition to other roles that demand keeping up with regulations, such as compliance auditor. Compliance auditors review business records to confirm that work complies with all applicable regulations. Depending on the field, you may need certification specific to that field.

• Required Education: Bachelor's degree
• Recommended Education: Master's degree
• Education Timeline: 4-6 years
• Experience Required: More than 5 years

Internal Auditor

Internal auditors, like compliance auditors, can use the skills developed in medical billing and coding careers to oversee other fields.

Internal auditors within an organization assess business operations — especially financial operations — to identify errors or possible risks.

This role also requires attention to detail, the ability to recognize problems and identify the root causes, and investigate sources of potential risk. You may need to seek certification as an internal auditor.

• Required Education: Bachelor's degree
• Recommended Education: Master's degree
• Education Timeline: 4-6 years
• Experience Required: 2-4 years

Executive Director

Executive directors lead organizations of all sizes and require a variety of skills, including leadership, business management, strategy and planning, and effective decision-making.

If, during your medical billing and coding career, you excelled at the strategic aspects of billing and coding — and you expanded your strategic skills across departments — working as an executive director may make excellent use of your abilities.

• Required Education: Bachelor's degree
• Recommended Education: Master's degree
• Education Timeline: 4-6 years
• Experience Required: More than 5 years