Prerequisites

What you need before Chapter 1

Basic medical terminology. You should be able to break a clinical word into its parts and get to its meaning: arthro- (joint) + -centesis (puncture to remove fluid) = arthrocentesis; hyper- (above) + lipid (fat) + -emia (in the blood) = hyperlipidemia. You do not need to have memorized anything. You need the habit of decomposition, because coding is applied vocabulary and every unfamiliar word in a chart is decomposable.

If terminology is thin, work through a terminology text alongside Parts I and II. This book does not teach terminology and will not pretend the vocabulary is optional.

General awareness of the body systems. You should know roughly where the pancreas is, what the gallbladder does, that the sigmoid colon is part of the large intestine, and that a rotator cuff is in the shoulder. You do not need anatomy at a clinical level. Where an anatomical distinction carries a coding consequence — and there are many — the book explains it at the point of use.

Basic computer literacy. You should be comfortable with a browser, a PDF, a spreadsheet, and searching a large document for a phrase. Much of this job is looking things up quickly in documents that are hundreds of pages long.

Arithmetic. Percentages, multiplication, and subtraction. That is the whole list. You will compute allowed amounts, coinsurance, contractual adjustments, relative value units, DRG payments, and accounts-receivable ratios, and none of it goes beyond what a calculator and a clear head can do. MATH_INTENSITY = low is not a marketing claim; it is the truth about the work.

What you do not need

• Any prior coding or billing experience. The book starts at the beginning.
• Any programming. "Coding" in this field means ICD-10-CM, CPT, and HCPCS Level II — code sets, not software. There is not a line of program code in this book.
• A clinical background. It helps, and a great many coders come from clinical work, but it is not required and it carries its own hazard: a clinician's instinct about what the provider meant is exactly what a coder must learn to set aside in favor of what the provider wrote.
• A degree. Certification, not a degree, is the credential that governs this field. Chapter 39 covers the paths in detail.

What you will want to have on the desk

You can read this entire book without buying anything. To practice with it, you will eventually want:

Chapter 6 is a full tour of the toolkit — the books, the free authoritative sources, the encoder, the practice management system, the clearinghouse — and how to set each one up so it is usable under time pressure.

A note on how long this takes

Each chapter is written to occupy roughly five to seven hours of serious work: reading, the worked examples, the exercises, the quiz, and the two case studies. Forty chapters is therefore a real course, not a weekend. The four learning paths in the front of each chapter tell you what to weight if you are working toward a specific goal — a certification exam, a first job, a billing role, or running a business office — and the instructor guide includes a fifteen-week syllabus, an eight-week accelerated version, and a self-paced schedule.

There is no shortcut through Part II and Part III. Those eleven chapters are the actual skill. Slow down there.