AS in Healthcare Reimbursement from Virginia College Online

Degree Requirements:Virginia College Online offers students a degree plan that will provide them with the necessary knowledge and training needed to become a successful medical biller and coder in the healthcare industry. In addition to taking 12 credit hours in foundation courses such as keyboarding and career exploration and planning, students are required to take 24 credit hours of general education courses such as humanities and fine arts, communications, mathematics and social and behavior sciences. To earn an Associate in Healthcare Reimbursement degree specifically, students must take 60 credit hours of concentration courses that will teach them the proper fundamentals of medical office principles and applications. These concentration courses will train students to specialize in medial languages such as Current Procedural Terminology (CPT), International Classification of Diseases (ICD), and Health Care Financing Administration Common Procedural Coding System (HCPCS). To obtain the degree, students must earn a total of 96 credits. Tuition and fees vary upon institute and location, but tend to range from $11,000 to $18,600 per year. The cost of books is included in the tuition. This degree should take full-time students about two years to earn.

Degree Benefits:Students who earn an associate’s in healthcare reimbursement typically work in the medical records field doing medical transcripts, billing and coding. They also tend to become health information technicians for general or surgical hospitals and for outpatient centers and smaller physician offices. In correlation with the prosperous career employment opportunities the healthcare industry as a whole will experience in the next coming years, technologists and medical records personnel will also experience much job growth. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employees in these fields are expected to see a 20 percent increase of available jobs, averaging about 35,100 new jobs within the next decade. Health information technologists and medical records professionals held about 172,500 jobs in 2008, according to the Bureau’s most recent statistics, the majority of which worked in hospitals. While salary depends on region, place of employment and the specific set of skills one may possess, health information technologists earned about $30,610 in 2008. Federal Executive Branch and general medical and surgical hospitals reportedly offered the highest salaries, the Bureau states.