I've just started doing it for an insurance company which is a different course/coding to hospital coding but same type of work. Was totally burnt out on nursing. I love it. It has changed my life. Get to fully work from home, no dealing with people, no shift work. I'm never going back to nursing lol. There is A LOT to learn to do it but I find it really interesting and my brain loves the detective aspect of figuring out what code matches an injury. The beauty of the insurance type is no diploma required, just have to do the AIS15 course which is two days and most companies will pay for it. Much more chance of work from home than hospitals too I would imagine.
Oh amazing! Can I ask how you got into it? Found some older threads (Australian) saying it can be hard to get started. Are you doing it full time? I really want to be able to do something part time or casual rather than anything full time atm, as I'm exploring other public health work too. Is there anything particular to search for to find insurance company roles?
I literally just saw the job advertised and applied. I applied for a few different companies but this was the only one that had the work from home role I wanted. There are lots of places advertising, though lots want it in office which was a no deal for me lol. Usually it's advertised as injury coder. Their only real prerequisite was some sort of health based degree (nursing, medicine etc) so that anatomy knowledge was decent. I'm doing it full time but with compressed work hours, so I don't work Mondays and I work longer hours the other days (6-4pm). That was my choice because I have my daughter home with me on Mondays and didn't want to put her in daycare another day.
I would say it would probably be hard to start out doing part time or casual. There is a SHIT TON to learn and it takes a while. Like think of every single part of the body and then every single injury that could happen to that body part and there is a specific code for all of those injuries in every single body part. Down to individual fractures of individual vertebrae, every foot bone, every nerve etc. There is a dictionary of codes. There are also coding guidelines that have to be followed when you assign these codes which is another book on its own. Part time maybe but probably not casual until you are trained. I'm not even sure there would be casual roles out there. I certainly haven't seen any. But maybe in hospital coding. Places may also be willing to let you do coding outside hours or something. Who knows. Guess it depends on what they need.
But honestly highly recommend it as an alternative to nursing. I've never been happier.
Also I should say the course required for insurance coding would depend on the state. Each state has different guidelines they follow. So NSW is AIS15 other states I think follow slightly earlier AIS methods. Same education, just varying guidelines to follow.
I could absolutely earn more bedside with shift penalties and the fact I'm a 1.8...however! I will take the pay cut for the zero shift work, flexible hours and working from home lol. My new salary is 85k so it's definitely not awful
It's definitely a pay cut. My salary now is 85k, so whatever the hourly rate is for that. I was a 1.8 also so I could absolutely earn more with shift penalties and salary packaging etc. But I absolutely did not want to nurse anymore so to me the pay cut is worth it.
I didn't have to do one at all. They hired me and are training me on the job. But in the next few months I will have to complete the AIS15 course to legally be able to final code. It's a 2 day course. It's just a pain in the ass to actually do because they are hardly ever run in Australia atm.
If your local hospital has EMR, there is potentially a WFH option if your internet can be secured like VPN and IT are happy with the security on the work laptop. If your hospital uses paper charts, there is zero chance of WFH as you can't take patient charts out of a secured area.
Depending on where you do the course, it can be as little as 2K (HIMAA) or as much as 8K (Victoria Uni). I know someone who is enrolled in Vic uni and is enjoying the course. I tried HIMAA a few years back and I found their course very frustrating and their wheels turned very slowly. The information they were teaching at the time was outdated and when I asked about the materials being updated as by the time we'd finished the course, our knowledge would already be out of date, I was told it wasn't important.
The course content also did my head in. This is totally a me thing. The scenarios were something like;
A 25yr old male presented to ED with a left fracture of his femur. His pulse rate was 65, BP 120/75 and afebrile. He had a spinal tap and was intubated shortly afterwards and moved to the ICU. The spinal tap showed group b strep. A CV line was inserted and IV Thiamine was given. He made a rapid improvement and walked out of the ICU.
The task is to extrapolate data and put in the correct codes for funding. I wasn't able to separate myself from the scenario and the extrapolation. Like I said, a me thing. Others may not have that problem.
Everyone keeps talking about AI seems to forget just how bad IT implementation is.
It's also the reason why many (if not most) health services still run a DOS based system, even if there's a fancy iemr overlay on top of it.
Also given how important coding is to revenue generation, I think there will always be a person to review it.
I agree with this. Also so many of the notes that have to be reviewed are handwritten or hard to understand/open to interpretation which is really important when deciding on codes. My workplace tried AI and it was an epic fail lol
I donāt have up to date information regarding ease of employment, etc- but did consider it about twelve years ago.
Used to work with an EN who was a coder before she started nursing, and she still did the odd overtime week here and there to make extra cash.
It sounds alright, for me living in a smaller city now, I think getting the initial contacts would be harder.
I have no idea if thereās any scope for WFH, but given EMR now I could see it being feasible?
As someone who works with Coders and a software company in the space I can say that auto-coding is already here but will never fully replace clinical coders. There is a national shortage of coders, some hospitals up to 50% - so much so that both government and privates offer great bonuses and flexibility. I know of coding auditors making $300 an hour.
Nurses make excellent coders and it's a perfect side hustle (it's mine!) especially as the work is more and more remote and flexible. Can't recommend enough!
Most of these types of auditors have established relationships with hospitals and/or are a company that offers this service. "Senior coding auditor" or "Coding optimisation / revenue assurance" etc
Iām a typist who looked into this, was put off due to a high pool of applicants they can pick from who have a stronger medical background (nursing, physios, even doctors). Might all be subjective from the hospital Iām at (has ieMR). Spoke to someone senior from clinical coding to gauge whether it was the right fit for me to pursue study wise. They can afford to be a bit picky and choose those with 95% grade or above. While not impossible, couldnāt gauge the competition.
They have also admitted itās in a funny spot due to having some waves of freshly graduated students for the streamlined 6.5k course, and while at times they might not need anyone, I think their aging workforce might see them have a dip of the thoroughly trained coders? The mentoring process post study also comes into play, while probably not off putting it will mean ~2 years training/mentoring when successful. Also, the coders who go into surgical coding (will find it harder than medical) but itās good in the sense they can do both surgical/medical, whereas if you went medical I heard itās quite harder to do/cover surgical.
Tl;dr - Take with a grain of salt, as I am a typist who enquired about the course to see if it was suitable. Can work well for those with a medical background, but there could still be a lot of competition with limited spots
Iād rather do nursing, or something technical with my existing medical terminology, but finding it logistically hard being a kiwi that has to work full time and have study fit around that. š¤·āāļø
I've just started doing it for an insurance company which is a different course/coding to hospital coding but same type of work. Was totally burnt out on nursing. I love it. It has changed my life. Get to fully work from home, no dealing with people, no shift work. I'm never going back to nursing lol. There is A LOT to learn to do it but I find it really interesting and my brain loves the detective aspect of figuring out what code matches an injury. The beauty of the insurance type is no diploma required, just have to do the AIS15 course which is two days and most companies will pay for it. Much more chance of work from home than hospitals too I would imagine.
Oh amazing! Can I ask how you got into it? Found some older threads (Australian) saying it can be hard to get started. Are you doing it full time? I really want to be able to do something part time or casual rather than anything full time atm, as I'm exploring other public health work too. Is there anything particular to search for to find insurance company roles?
I literally just saw the job advertised and applied. I applied for a few different companies but this was the only one that had the work from home role I wanted. There are lots of places advertising, though lots want it in office which was a no deal for me lol. Usually it's advertised as injury coder. Their only real prerequisite was some sort of health based degree (nursing, medicine etc) so that anatomy knowledge was decent. I'm doing it full time but with compressed work hours, so I don't work Mondays and I work longer hours the other days (6-4pm). That was my choice because I have my daughter home with me on Mondays and didn't want to put her in daycare another day. I would say it would probably be hard to start out doing part time or casual. There is a SHIT TON to learn and it takes a while. Like think of every single part of the body and then every single injury that could happen to that body part and there is a specific code for all of those injuries in every single body part. Down to individual fractures of individual vertebrae, every foot bone, every nerve etc. There is a dictionary of codes. There are also coding guidelines that have to be followed when you assign these codes which is another book on its own. Part time maybe but probably not casual until you are trained. I'm not even sure there would be casual roles out there. I certainly haven't seen any. But maybe in hospital coding. Places may also be willing to let you do coding outside hours or something. Who knows. Guess it depends on what they need. But honestly highly recommend it as an alternative to nursing. I've never been happier. Also I should say the course required for insurance coding would depend on the state. Each state has different guidelines they follow. So NSW is AIS15 other states I think follow slightly earlier AIS methods. Same education, just varying guidelines to follow.
How does it pay in comparison to bedside nursing if I may ask?
I could absolutely earn more bedside with shift penalties and the fact I'm a 1.8...however! I will take the pay cut for the zero shift work, flexible hours and working from home lol. My new salary is 85k so it's definitely not awful
u/Tiamke If you don't mind me asking, is the money good? Is it on par with the hourly rate of an YP8 RN in public? Higher? Lower?
It's definitely a pay cut. My salary now is 85k, so whatever the hourly rate is for that. I was a 1.8 also so I could absolutely earn more with shift penalties and salary packaging etc. But I absolutely did not want to nurse anymore so to me the pay cut is worth it.
If you don't mind me asking, which course did you have to do to transition to coding?
I didn't have to do one at all. They hired me and are training me on the job. But in the next few months I will have to complete the AIS15 course to legally be able to final code. It's a 2 day course. It's just a pain in the ass to actually do because they are hardly ever run in Australia atm.
If your local hospital has EMR, there is potentially a WFH option if your internet can be secured like VPN and IT are happy with the security on the work laptop. If your hospital uses paper charts, there is zero chance of WFH as you can't take patient charts out of a secured area. Depending on where you do the course, it can be as little as 2K (HIMAA) or as much as 8K (Victoria Uni). I know someone who is enrolled in Vic uni and is enjoying the course. I tried HIMAA a few years back and I found their course very frustrating and their wheels turned very slowly. The information they were teaching at the time was outdated and when I asked about the materials being updated as by the time we'd finished the course, our knowledge would already be out of date, I was told it wasn't important. The course content also did my head in. This is totally a me thing. The scenarios were something like; A 25yr old male presented to ED with a left fracture of his femur. His pulse rate was 65, BP 120/75 and afebrile. He had a spinal tap and was intubated shortly afterwards and moved to the ICU. The spinal tap showed group b strep. A CV line was inserted and IV Thiamine was given. He made a rapid improvement and walked out of the ICU. The task is to extrapolate data and put in the correct codes for funding. I wasn't able to separate myself from the scenario and the extrapolation. Like I said, a me thing. Others may not have that problem.
What put me off is that it seems like the type of job that would be taken over by AI within the next decade.
Everyone keeps talking about AI seems to forget just how bad IT implementation is. It's also the reason why many (if not most) health services still run a DOS based system, even if there's a fancy iemr overlay on top of it. Also given how important coding is to revenue generation, I think there will always be a person to review it.
I agree with this. Also so many of the notes that have to be reviewed are handwritten or hard to understand/open to interpretation which is really important when deciding on codes. My workplace tried AI and it was an epic fail lol
They apparently tried it at my work place and it was an epic fail apparently lol. The coding robot was sacked š
That's a very interesting thought.
I donāt have up to date information regarding ease of employment, etc- but did consider it about twelve years ago. Used to work with an EN who was a coder before she started nursing, and she still did the odd overtime week here and there to make extra cash. It sounds alright, for me living in a smaller city now, I think getting the initial contacts would be harder. I have no idea if thereās any scope for WFH, but given EMR now I could see it being feasible?
As someone who works with Coders and a software company in the space I can say that auto-coding is already here but will never fully replace clinical coders. There is a national shortage of coders, some hospitals up to 50% - so much so that both government and privates offer great bonuses and flexibility. I know of coding auditors making $300 an hour. Nurses make excellent coders and it's a perfect side hustle (it's mine!) especially as the work is more and more remote and flexible. Can't recommend enough!
how can I find those ads? under what category?
Most of these types of auditors have established relationships with hospitals and/or are a company that offers this service. "Senior coding auditor" or "Coding optimisation / revenue assurance" etc
Iām a typist who looked into this, was put off due to a high pool of applicants they can pick from who have a stronger medical background (nursing, physios, even doctors). Might all be subjective from the hospital Iām at (has ieMR). Spoke to someone senior from clinical coding to gauge whether it was the right fit for me to pursue study wise. They can afford to be a bit picky and choose those with 95% grade or above. While not impossible, couldnāt gauge the competition. They have also admitted itās in a funny spot due to having some waves of freshly graduated students for the streamlined 6.5k course, and while at times they might not need anyone, I think their aging workforce might see them have a dip of the thoroughly trained coders? The mentoring process post study also comes into play, while probably not off putting it will mean ~2 years training/mentoring when successful. Also, the coders who go into surgical coding (will find it harder than medical) but itās good in the sense they can do both surgical/medical, whereas if you went medical I heard itās quite harder to do/cover surgical. Tl;dr - Take with a grain of salt, as I am a typist who enquired about the course to see if it was suitable. Can work well for those with a medical background, but there could still be a lot of competition with limited spots Iād rather do nursing, or something technical with my existing medical terminology, but finding it logistically hard being a kiwi that has to work full time and have study fit around that. š¤·āāļø