Benefits to Becoming a Certified Professional Coding Instructor (CPC-I)

Okay, so the next question is benefits to becoming a CPC-I. CPC-I stands for Certified Professional Coding Instructor. That’s with the AAPC, of course. Way back in the day they started this PMCC (Professional Medical Coding Curriculum) and they would have the instructors come, get some extra training. They had to actually do presentations to each other, and then they had to take another exam which is, you know, similar to the CPC exam but a little more intense, had to do it a little bit quicker. And I’m proud to say I was in the very, very first class of the CPC-I. That was many, many–

Chandra: Was yours like mine?

Laureen: How was yours?

Chandra: Where you had to go to national to do it…

Laureen: Yup.

Chandra: And you had to do a presentation in front of the room.

Laureen: You had to pick a topic out of a hat, you go to hallway, prepare it, come back, and present it in 20 minutes.

Chandra: Well, we had 15.  You had 15 minutes to prepare a 15 minute presentation.

Laureen: Yeah.

Chandra: While you were presenting, the next person was out in the hallway preparing theirs to come in as soon as you were done. Okay. And you had to take the written exam the end of day 1, and the orals were on day 2.

Laureen: Right.

Chandra: They’ve changed it since then, and I’m like, envious now because ours was stressful.

Laureen: It was very. But you know what, it makes us better instructors because now, look at us. We get on Facebook Live and, you know, anything could go wrong. But, it is a good credential if you want to get into teaching and it is required in order to teach AAPC’s curriculums. In order to be a CPC-I, I believe there’s a five-year requirement that you’ve actually been teaching. And you can do it online now, the courses online. And then when you go sit for the exam, a proctored exam with other CPC and other AAPC credential exams going on. Yours is a little shorter. It’s 2 1/2 hours, I believe. But the benefits are certain colleges that want to teach using the AAPC’s curriculum, CPC-I’s. You know, that’s a benefit.

For us, as we’re growing and we hire instructors, we look for CPC-I’s because we use the AAPC curriculum alongside our curriculum. We kind of, you know, use it as bonus material but still, we want to have people that have that credential because it just makes sense. Chandra and I, and Alicia are the main instructors, but then we have coaches, and the coaches are a little bit different. They’re helping people to finish the course. They’re kind of like a cheerleader, you know, when you go to the gym and you have a coach, they make sure you finish. And we really are finding people need that nowadays. We’re so busy, we start things and that coach says “come on”. They’re the friendly nag, you know, to get done. “We want to help you reach your goal. Remember, you said you want to have this done by the end of the year,” that sort of thing. But the instructors with us are CPC-I’s, for whatever the courses that we’re doing, so that’s a benefit.

Chandra: There’s lots of benefits to it. When you’re a CPC-I, you’re kind of in a different group, and you’ll find that you have a lot of people reach out to you. You’ll find there’s even private groups on Facebook that you can only get into if you are a CPC-I. And it’s resources for those instructors to help them share information.