🔍 How to Exam Prep for the CCS-P, CPC, and CCS Exams

How to prep for the medical coding exams

for free. I'm Mrs. J, curriculum

director here at AMCI, and it's my

pleasure. Let's get into it. But first,

let's go ahead and discuss some medical

coding exam prep dos and don'ts. Yes,

there are some rules that you should

employ.

Number one, don't

don't take advice from someone who

doesn't have the certification that you

want.

If they didn't take the exam, then how

can they tell you how to take the exam

at this point? They're just guessing.

And you, my friend, are the experience

experiment.

Number two, don't.

A lot of you are doing this. Don't

create practice exams using AI. AI is

not that developed and most of the

answers are incorrect and you will just

become more confused and frustrated. Use

scenarios that have been vetted by

certified coders. Number three,

don't use an encoder until after you are

certified

because you will just become reliant on

that encoder and you cannot use an

encoder when you take the medical coding

exams. So go ahead and practice the

skills that you're going to use when you

take the exam. Don't develop bad habits.

That's a bad habit. And don't number

four, don't use tricks to solve medical

coding scenarios. No, tricks are for

amateurs. And if the medical coding exam

is demonstrating your mastery of the

medical coding guidelines, then what are

you doing? What are you doing? Are you

demonstrating mastery? No. All right,

let me show you what I've learned. I've

learned these tricks, too. Yes, I went

on YouTube as I've said and I learned

this trick. All right.

Now, some instructors teach this process

of elimination or tricks to pass the

medical coding exams. And I just want to

tell you at AMCI, we strongly reject

this approach. Why? Because these

methods encourage students to ignore the

documentation.

Yes, you're not supposed to look at the

documentation and instead you're to

focus on eliminating answer choices

based on surface

differences like spotting one code or

one modifier that looks off or

different. Then students narrow it down

to two choices before they can even read

the scenario.

Now this might seem like a shortcut

coders but it is completely

wrong it bypasses the skill of proper

code abstraction which is foundational

to real world coding. So not only is it

wrong you won't learn how to code.

You won't. Now some people might say hey

this is a test taking technique. Okay.

And you're only going to employ it on

the exam. Okay. I still say don't do it.

I think mastery of the guidelines is

quicker.

All right, so let me show you. All

right, so let's go ahead and solve this

scenario based on that process of

elimination.

All right, so we look at the codes and

the primary

procedure

that are different or likely wrong. So A

and C both have the primary procedure

that is the same.

And B and D, they're different.

30520

and 31255.

So we're going to eliminate B and D.

Boom. Boom.

And if we go on that principle, you just

got your answer wrong because the

correct answer is either B or D. And

this is a good example of why you should

not use tricks. And did I set up this

scenario so it can be wrong? Absolutely.

Absolutely I did. and coders. The people

who generate these scenarios

are people like me and they are aware of

the tricks. And even if I didn't set

this up,

statistics show that you have a 50%

chance of getting the answer correct

when you use process of elimination on

basic coding questions. And that number

decreases

as the complexity of those questions

increase. So don't do it. Now let's

solve the scenario the correct way. And

the correct way is using guidelines and

read that documentation. And we teach

you how to pull out those keywords

really quickly. So you may as well do it

right. Oh. Oh, guess what? We can

eliminate something.

Yes. Look at D.

All right. So, you can eliminate D

because

guideline

modifier guideline 51. You cannot put a

51 modifier on a primary listed

procedure. You didn't because it's for

the secondary or subsequent procedure.

So, I'm getting rid of that. That's a

guideline. Now I'm going to read my

scenario and we do it this way at AMCI.

What CPT codes are reported? A 3123750

modifier 31255

50 modifier 3052050

modifier B 30520

31255

51 modifier C 3123750

modifier 3 0520

51 modifier 31255 50 modifier and D

3125550

and 51 modifier and 30520

a patient underwent

Bilateral nasal sino sinus diagnostic

endoscopy.

Finding the airway obstructed, the

physician fractures the middle turbinets

to perform the surgical endoscopy with

total bilateral ethmoidctomy and nasal

septtolasty.

What do we do? We're going to inventory.

We're going to write down all diagnosis,

signs, and symptoms. and we're going to

kind of do it in order and also we're

going to di we're going to document

those procedures. All right. So we have

a bilateral nasal sinus diagnostic

endoscopy. I put diagnostic in all caps

for a reason. Why? Because a guideline

applies. I'm going to tell you in a

moment. All right. The diagnosis is at

number two. The patient had an

obstructed airway. Number three, the

doctor fractured the middle turbinets

and it says to perform the the

procedure. So he fractured the ter the

turinets to access the surgical site and

four surgical endoscopy with bilateral

total excuse me with total bilateral

ethmoid ectomy and also a nasal

septtolasty was carried out. All right

so we're going to eliminate some things.

I'm going to eliminate number one

because this diagnostic procedure is

bundled in the surgical procedure often.

Sometimes it isn't. So, we're going to

make that line a little clear, but nine

times out of 10, it's bundled. All

right, I'm going to get rid of the

procedure at number two because if you

look at the answers, there are no

procedure codes. So, I'm going to put a

thin line across that. You might need

it. But in number three, I'm going to

get rid of three because access

accessing the surgical site is often

bundled into the treatment. All right,

so that's going to leave us with four

and five. We got a code for this

bilateral

endoscopy and ethmoidctomy and the

septtolasty.

OMG, I can eliminate something on site.

After I've read the scenario and

documented my inventory, I'm noticing

that we have this bilateral ethmoidctomy

and endoscopy and the septtolasty.

Septolasty

means that they repaired the septum

and you only have one septum, right? So

you cannot have a bilateral

septtolasty ever because you only have

one septum.

So if you look at the answers

and you look at A,

A is coding for three bilateral

procedures.

So right away I know A is incorrect