Tabs are definitely okay, had tabs on both books and they did not even look at them. It sounds like the brief definitions are okay. They just don't want you to write long paragraphs in the coding manuals. The content of the CCA exam has a lot more focus on documentation and legal and ethical issues. For the CCS exam it looks like it focuses mostly on coding, but has some questions that are similar to the CCA exam covering documentation, etc. I would not worry about those questions too much. Honestly, the questions seemed rather easy to me and I found it easy to pick out the answer from the multiple choice.
I used the following books to prepare:
CCA Exam Prep book from AHIMA 3rd edition - this is the one that is based on ICD-9 - also has an online testing component - really liked that, however, it has the same questions that are in the book - the questions in AHIMA's exam prep books are very similar to the questions on the exam - actually I found the questions on the exam even easier than this prep book
Health Information Management Technology - an AHIMA textbook by Merida L. Johns - pretty much covers every HIM topic that could possibly come up on either CCA or CCS exam - I did have an older edition that I used and it had a lot of mistakes in the chapter questions and answers - the multiple choice questions in the book are pretty similar to types of questions asked on the exam
Professional Review Guide for the CCA Exam - I found an older used copy on Ebay - I found out that a friend's review book for the RHIT has almost the exact same questions - so if you buy one of these books you only need one version of it - I think they make one for CCS - lots of coding questions and reimbursement questions in this book - it also covers all of the topics that will be on the exam so that is good practice as well - just a warning - there are a few too many coding questions in here and the coding questions in this review guide were a lot harder than what I encountered on the exam
I also bought a cheap used copy of Principles of Healthcare Reimbursement - an AHIMA textbook by Casto - but I found it really dry and boring - not the best book to use for a quick review - ended up not using it
I recently finished an HIM course and we used these two textbooks which are excellent (not absolutely necessary, but if you can find a cheap used copy might be worth checking out): Health Information Management (AHIMA - LaTour) and Documentation for Health Records (AHIMA - Farenholz).
As far as ICD-9-CM review I mostly used the ICD-9-Mini course from CCO and also practiced the questions in the above review guides. I probably did not review CPT coding enough before the exam, but I managed to figure out most of those questions. I did not even get a chance to bubble and highlight my CPT manual before taking the CCA exam, but luckily it did not affect me. I would strongly recommend highlighting though before taking the CCS and CPC exams.
One more tip, for the reimbursement questions make sure you know all the basics regarding Medicare, Medicaid, and there are a lot of acronyms involved in reimbursement like UHDDS and OASIS. Make sure you have at least a general idea of what those are so you can pick them out of a multiple choice question. BTW, would not even bother to study for any computer or technology related questions - they were super easy.
