Studying For The CPC Exam — Video

Laureen: Alright! Let’s get into the questions.

Q: Two more weeks to go before my CPC test, how should I utilize this next few weeks? Since I get this one a lot, I thought this was worth doing tonight.

A: So, I have a formula that I basically share every time I get this question, or when I do one-on-one calls with students. It’s basically, number one, take a good medical coding course like an 80-hour equivalent course not a shorty condensed one, but a full one; or have equivalent experience. Now, as far as equivalent experience goes that would be someone probably working in like a surgery center that use a whole bunch of different types of surgeries. If you were ten years coding cardio, you have experience, but because the CPC exam and the CPC-H exam and basically all of them, are testing you on a broad base of knowledge, not a detailed, a good medical coding course is definitely worth doing. So, obviously with 2 weeks left, you’ve already done that.

Studying For The CPC Exam — Video

Steps 2 is to do a review class like the Blitz, live or recorded, and follow the instructions for marking up your manuals, especially the CPT manual. Our bubbling and highlighting technique is really what I’m talking about. So, after that, the third step, and this is I would say the key step, you’re going to take everything you learned and reviewed and now you’re going to practice and you need to do TIMED practice exams. That’s why I have it in all caps because I can’t tell you how many times I talked to people and they did do the AAPC practice exams or even hours and I’m like, “What did you score? How many minutes did it take you?” And they’re like, “I didn’t time it.” “No, you got to time it.” So, if you take the 50 question exams and that’s what I recommend you start with because if you’re going to do it TIMED, you want to give yourself two hours, that two hours aside and go to the library somewhere where you’re not going to be disturbed and do it like the real thing and see how you do, because that’s going to give you the ability to practice how to take the exam in addition to your content understanding.

We have a package of three 50 Question Practice Exams, the AAPC has a package of three 50 Question Practice Exams; so between the two of us, that’s six 50 Question Practice Exams you can do. And you want to keep going until you get an 85%.

Can you re-take exams? You could as far as like homework goes, but not to count the score because you will have memory of some of those questions. And then, once you get there, if you want to do one of our 150-question one, those are not created by us but by third parties that we’ve vetted and think they’re pretty good. Go ahead and do that; again, do it in a timed situation where you’re going to sit there 5 hours like the real exam and do it. So that’s why we like the 50 question ones, because they’re more realistic timeframe to buy out, and keep doing it until you get 85%.

Check the rationale, even on the ones you got right, you learn so much from the rationale and that’s really something I give kudos to Ruth for. She’s excellent at really writing rationale, that’s the hardest part about writing mock board exam question is giving the rationale. The AAPC doesn’t have to do that for the real exam, you just got it right or wrong, they don’t have to tell you which ones or why. So, take advantage of that for the practice test; so practice makes not perfect but makes passing the board exam. And remember, you only need a 70%, so you can get 45 questions wrong on a 150- question exam and still pass. So, that’s our goal. And I go into a lot more detail on the Blitz videos, but this is just – what to do in your last two weeks? Practice, practice, practice. And use those many mock exams, they’re pretty reasonable pricewise considering all that you’ve invested up to this point. And best wishes, hopefully we will have you on the slide next month, Rosetta.

Get More Information about CPC Exam

CPC Exam – Review Videos
AAPC – CPC Exam