Practicode and CodingCertification.Org Partnership Interview – Video

UPDATE: CCO no longer offers Practicode. Please visit the AAPC for access http://cco.pe/practicode

I’m going to open up the line and let me get Bob on here. I’m going to un-mute you Bob.

Bob: Hey, look at there, there I am.

Laureen: Yey! There you are, great! So, welcome. I’m glad your train ride ended so you can join us. There’s lots of excitement in our Twitter chat and everywhere about PractiCode so maybe you could give us a little bit more. I guess, a brief sales pitch, if you will.

Bob: It’s not really a sales pitch because this product really works. A little bit of background, I am the Director of Education Services for Aviacode. And Aviacode, as you can see on the screen, down there on the corner “built by Aviacode.” Aviacode is a medical coding company and we employ right now between 300 and 400 coders, and we are currently looking for additional coders. We just signed a physician’s network with 1200 physicians, and I know by the first quarter of the year, we’re going to be looking quite for another 300, 400, 500 coders. We expanded our sales team from 2 to 6, so we now have sales people across the country. It is going to explode on the provider side, so we need to explode on the coder side.

I’ve been working with a number of schools in the West and then a little friend connected me with a lady name Laureen. Laureen and I had just a short little two-hour call today. There’re so many similarities in our lives and we both want to really help coders. My background is in education, the last 12 years I’ve worked in higher education, and I found a huge gap between education and certification in getting a job in the real world in medical coding. As chance may have it, as faith may have it, a friend of mine from junior high school is the Chief Operating Officer and President of Aviacode, and he told me about Practicode early, early, early this year, and I said, “I want to be a part of this because this is the real game changer for coders as they’re trying to build their ‘two years experience.’” And as I interviewed our coding managers, our hiring managers, is that I interviewed hiring agents throughout the United States at the AAPC conference in Orlando, at regional AAPC conferences, in AHIMA meetings, I found out that really they don’t want years of experience, they want proficiency.

Laureen: Yeah.

Bob: What Practicode does is it helps you build proficiency. That right there as you build your proficiency in coding that is what’s going to land you a career in medical coding. And so, Practicode is loaded with over a thousand real-world redacted medical charts to allow you to practice coding and to build your proficiency to where you can print off, basically, a transcript of what you’ve done and present that to employers across the country.

Laureen: Very good.

Bob: As well as Aviacode.

Laureen: Right. So they do tell. Talk a little bit about the modules and what you have plans for.

Practicode and CodingCertification.Org Partnership Interview – Video

Bob: Well, Aviacode is we hire coders based on specialty. As we pull charts from EHRs across the country, they are split up by specialty, and then they come in to our proprietary software called ProCoder. ProCoder allows you to be a more efficient and a better coder because all the edits are built in; everything is shown on one screen. You don’t have to balance between screens to figure out the proper code. That allows people to code more charts per hour than they would using a standard EHR standalone system. That’s ProCoder, which you see is on the screen there. This is our proprietary software and there is nobody else in the market using this.

So, based on that, PractiCode works a lot, and like ProCoder, it basically emulates that. So, right now, inside of PractiCode we have modules, ICD-9 charts, modules of ICD-10 charts, if you’re a brand new student. You made me look, one of your first jobs after October of next year, October first when ICD-10 rolls out, you might be the expert on ICD-10 versus somebody that’s just learning and trying to translate most anything.

So, what you’ll see on the screen here there’s modules on Family Practice/Internal Medicine, ICD-9 and ICD-10, this is mostly E/M coding, General Surgery, Inpatient. Right now, we have ICD-10 and I asked them to do it in ICD-9 as well. So, that is coming. Professional Fee Practicum is actually a module that was handpicked by our vice president of coding who just happen to come from AAPC. These are handpicked to help you pass the CPC exam. Then, there’s also Radiology and General Surgery are both live now as well. As you can see on the screen, Emergency Department is coming. We plan on having about 25 different modules with up to 300 to 500 charts per module, so you can really build your proficiency inside of each specialty.

Laureen: Very good. Now, I don’t know, do you mind if we show one example of one –

Bob: Sure!

Laureen: I pulled this up because Bob gave me access. This is on that proprietary ProCoder system, right?

Bob: Well, this is PractiCode, but this is kind of what ProCoder looks like. There’s a lot more tools and a lot more edits that are built-in to ProCoder, but this itself is PractiCode…See where there is patient history on this client. You see below the dates right up there after patient history, Laureen? You can actually click on one of the blue dates, that is a previous record. It shows what the diagnosis code, what the procedure code down at the bottom was for this chart. And so, a new patient history is going to show up here and then you can pop back over to the clinical record by clicking on the word “clinical record.”

Laureen: Very nice.

So, someone that goes through PractiCode and gets a high level of proficiency and tries to apply to Aviacode will have a leg up, because they’re familiar with the environment that ProCoder looks like, and you guys will also know how proficient they are because you run the system.

Bob: Yeah, absolutely! In fact, we look at people coming through proficiency and PractiCode higher than years of experience. Because while somebody might have two or three years of experience, you really don’t know what kind of coding they’ve done, how much coding that they’ve done. I know people that code literally 2 to 4 hours a week in the middle of medical office environment and that they say, “I got so many years of coding.” “Gosh! You should be a better coder than this then.” So, this really helps people demonstrate their proficiency or demonstrate how good a coder they really are.

Laureen: That’s really great. And I wanted to design this and you guys beat me to it. I’m so happy because I know this is a lot of work. Alright, great! And then you had announcement, something that you wanted to offer today?

Bob: Well, we’re going to do a drawing for one free one year subscription of PractiCode.

Laureen: Yeah!

Bob: On a retail basis, this is probably over $400. They will get all the modules that we currently have. You look here it says Gold; there’s 30 points for Gold for $369. Actually, the 30 points, if you bought every module we have, it would be over $369. We currently sell this to education providers and retail through an education providers, usually between $249 and $299 because we try to give a little bit better price for students, that’s why we do it. So, this is a real tremendous, tremendous value.

Laureen:  number 1.

Boyd: Laura Kennedy

Laureen: Laura Kennedy, come on down. You won!

Thank you, Bob, for that wonderful gift. That was a very nice last minute surprise.

Bob: Absolutely! I’m so happy to support your school and everything that you’re doing. I’m so looking forward to working with you in the future and helping coders get jobs.

Bob: And one last thing. I really want to say about our coding jobs is, it is all work from home. So, commute time, gas prices at 4 bucks a gallon, wearing a business casual or business dress – all of that goes out the window.

Alicia: One more thing. We just have an article up on the blog on remote coding. So, make sure that you’re watching the blogs and the little articles that are put up. I really look forward to working with you, Bob, and ironing out a few more details. And to the audience, we’ll be giving some information at you with our discounted prices on PractiCode probably within the next couple of days, so stay tune.

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