Medical Coding Course Overview - HCAS 129 and HCAS 133

Before you can work in virtually any hospital office you need to know the basics of human anatomy.

Is your job to schedule a procedure? Transcribe doctor’s notes? Code insurance paperwork? X-ray a patient? In virtually any scenario, if you don’t know the difference between a fibula and tibiofibular, or an ileum and an ilium, or prostate and prostrate, your day can be long and confusing.

There is a very long list of medical terminology that sounds similar. In HCAS 133, Survey of Anatomy, students learn the different body systems and terminology.

“Whether you are going into coding or assisting or administration you are going to be looking through patient charts, talking to patients and talking to other health care professionals and insurance companies,” said Faith Hamer D.C., R.M.A., who teaches the course. “You are going to need to know what you are talking about and if you don’t know the medical terminology, you’re lost.”

Hamer said the course is the foundation for virtually every medical professional. Students should expect the class to include intense memorization of the skeletal and muscle systems as well as other parts of the human anatomy.

Students will also study basic chemistry and why and how the body’s systems work.

“For example, how does the kidney function? How does it filter waste products so we urinate those waste products out of the body,” Hamer said. “There is that understanding that’s needed.

“If you have an understanding of how the kidney works, than you better understand what the disease process is doing to the individual and why they need a certain treatment or procedure,” she said. “That’s what ties their job into knowing this information.”

The HCAS 129 course is an electronic health records course that gives students the opportunity to work in the AHIMA Virtual Labs with actual electronic health records.

Fictional patients are plugged into the health information software and students can try out new software functions or practice standard processes and tools for coding, identity management, deficiency management, chart analysis, and more.

Hamer said the course is another core necessity for anyone working in the medical field.

“All the students say it’s a lot of fun to go into the lab and use the records and learn to move things around and explore,” she said.