BTW...MCATS are for PRE-medical school.

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and have chosen to immigrate to America..or have gotten an appointment at a hospital here. They have not taken anything away from us. They were able to get visas because of their valuable medical skills. Yes they want to make money, like most of us.  Check out some of the profiles of doctors on hospital web sites. Puts a face to the voice.  Like or it not, it's helpful to many people in this country to visit a doctor who speaks their native language.

and Tessier's The Surgical Word Book, 3rd edition.  Books you could buy used I would say would be Stedman's Pathology and Lab Medicine and Cardiology/Pulmonary word book.  These are all the books I use the most during my day.  You could buy other speciality word books as you need them and could probably go used with those.

I wouldn't bother with buying a drug book, new editions come out every year and I just stick to the FDA website and RXList as my drug references.

Also FYI, not a book, but I use my Stedman's Electronic Medical Dictationary a lot.  It's easier to open the program than it is to pick up a huge 30-pound dictionary.

background and anatomy and physiology knowledge, a transition into coding wouldn't be hard at all.  From what I can tell by looking through my husband's books, an MT would have to learn insurance regulations and legalities.  We've basically got all the medical background down or we should be if we're worth our salt as an MT.

I even contacted AHIMA and found that the qualifications for taking the CCS or CCP coding exams are completion of the a coding program, RHIT program, or RHIA or related work experience.  Transcription is part of HIM, albeit the red-headed stepchild of the HIM department, but a part nonetheless and so satisfies the qualification of having work experience.

The test is tough though.  My husband didn't pass it his first time out and I think I read something like only 20% or so pass it the first time.  So it would probably be best to take some sort of formal coding class, in my opinion.

basically had the words correct.   They were such common terms I don't know how anyone could have gotten through school and not had them at least 100 times.

Also doing one search on Google with the misspelled words would have probably turned up the answer.

I have a national coding certificate.  I cut back on my MT work and got a job auditing physician records and scoring their documentation, then gave them feedback to maximize their reimbursement for the services they provided.  When I moved to a new area, the field for the type of coding I was doing had less of a demand, so I increased my MT work.  Now that I'm back in my "home town" I need to network and re-enter the field.  The money is just as good, if not better in some cases, with much better benefits, plus it is something you leave at the office at the end of the day.

d~

But I try to keep them all as simple as possible, one office with 2 surgeons has their own letterhead, so no problem there and they want things very simple.  All work for all also, besides getting printed by me, is put on a diskette for them to download on their systems for them to make whatever changes they choose.  All others with no letterhead, I supply all paper for (Xerox) and free delivery and pickup to all.  It is free for them, I pay someone to pickup/deliver.  That's how simple I want it, and I also want to bill out and get paid only once a month. 

Everyone seems to like the idea, and it has been working for quite some time (10 years) and my theory is, if it isn't broken, don't fix it.  *LOL* 

As for the national, my weekend work, each client has a CP (client profile) and some of the CPs are more difficult than the others and once in a GREAT while, I might forget SOMETHING but then I contact someone beyond who usually fixes whatever I messed up. 

Both kids survived it quite nicely.  That's 1 down, 179 to go!!!

x

I graduated from CAI and got an offer to test with MQ the week I graduated.  I also have a friend who took the CAI course and got a job soon after she finished.  It covered all the word parts, abbreviations, and had lots and lots of real doctor dictations to practice.  There is nothing like on-the-job experience and I will be the first to admit I learn something new almost everyday, but I felt I was ready to work by the time I was done with the course. 

Great post BTW.  I get tired of hearing about the "top 3" as if there is no other way to become an MT.

I have heard that old school MTs who learned the usiness when they were working on typewriters and with carbon sets, etc. learned to listen ahead several words so they could hear any changes the dictator made before they got to it so they didn't have to stop and correct anything.  I've never figured out how that works, though.  I get a couple of words ahead of where I'm typing, but if I get too far out I confuzzle myself too much.

I think MTSO management doesn't always want MTs to talk to other MTs because then they might find out how crappy they are as bosses.

The other thing that has helped me enormously on my speed is to put errors in my Expander - when I type teh for the or pretty much any typo I make.  This makes a huge difference, especially when my hands are tired or stiff, and I'm not stopping to fix stuff like that any more.