Some free CEU resources are available for maintaining your medical coding and billing association membership if you know where to look. Read on to find out more.
Free AAPC units
Membership in the AAPC includes a subscription to the organization’s magazine, The Coding Edge. Each month, the AAPC website includes an online quiz covering articles in that month’s publication. Complete the quiz, and your CEU is automatically linked to your account. How’s that for healthcare information management?
Other free resources may be local chapter opportunities or attendance at certain lectures. You can contact the AAPC directly to inquire about opportunity in your area.
Free American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) units
AHIMA offers five recorded webinars that are related to its Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns, which is aimed at hospital management. Check out the AHIMA website for links to the webinars, as well as audio resources, event and conference listings, and a host of other professional resources geared toward coders.
Medicare’s web-based training
Medicare offers web-based training, organized into a series of modules. The web modules offered by Uncle Sam are quite informative, and you can complete them at your own pace.
These training exercises are relevant to current coding and processing issues, and Medicare updates them regularly, keeping you abreast of the latest developments and changes. After you complete the web training, you take an online quiz. Pass the quiz and earn a free CEU.
You need to enter these CEUs into your AAPC CEU tracker account yourself. If you are earning CEUs toward other organization certifications, you need to follow their protocol for submitting them. Check out the CMS website for more information about this great resource.
