By Roy L. Williams -- The Birmingham News
March 19, 2010, 5:30AM
March 19, 2010, 5:30AM
Virginia College has started a program on its Birmingham campus that combines classroom instruction in medical billing with on-the-job training in area doctors' offices.
Lindsey Wingate, one of the first students enrolled in the Healthcare Reimbursement Services program, already has benefited from it. She managed to find a job in one of the toughest labor markets in memory, at a time when the metro area's unemployment rate stands at a 26-year high of 11 percent.
"Everything I learned there helped me tremendously in getting a job," she said.
Healthcare Reimbursement Services was launched in January separately from the school and staffed by professionals in the field. It offers to local physicians and medical clinics professional billing and coding services provided by trained Virginia College students, said Jeff Reiner, director of the program. And the students get real-world experience on top of what they receive in the classroom.
He said it is modeled after Virginia College's Culinard and cosmetology programs, which allow culinary and beauty salon students to get live experience.
Reiner said Virginia College began putting together the program a year ago while searching for ways to increase the chances of its students getting hired after graduating.
"We spoke to practice managers from around the state and they told us that the average student coming out of a billing and coding program does not have any hands-on experience and they have to spend considerable time training them on the basics of the business," he said. "If they could get someone out of Virginia College who has the skills to step right into a billing or coding job, they would be very interested in hiring our graduates."
Four Virginia College students at its Palisades campus in Birmingham started taking classroom courses in September for 5½ weeks, followed by 5½ weeks working in doctors offices that have partnered with the program.
Wingate said getting a job in this economy would have been a lot harder if not for her experience through Healthcare Reimbursement Services.
"I experienced real-life billing situations and how to work through them," Wingate said. "Everyone was very sweet and encouraging. They took the time to help me learn and progress, which is very hard to find sometimes."
Virginia College has partnered with Birmingham-based EHS, which provides the software the students use for medical billing and coding. "They have a program called EHS University, an online training module that students get tested on at the end of their classroom training," Reiner said.
Reiner said trained medical billing and coding professionals are in high demand as doctors' offices strive to increase their chances of getting paid by health insurance companies. He estimated that one-fourth of all medical practice income is lost to underpricing, missed charges or other mistakes.
"Because of this trend, the need for medical billing and coding professionals is growing and generating job opportunities," Reiner said.
The Salary.com Web site says the median expected salary for a typical medical billing clerk in the United States is $31,800.
Virginia College also launched a Healthcare Reimbursement Services program on its Austin, Texas, campus in February, and hopes to expand it to other campuses, Reiner said.
Article Source: http://blog.al.com/businessnews/2010/03/virginia_college_teams_with_do.html
Image Source: http://media.al.com/businessnews/photo/lindseywingate-0319jpg-881ecc08ae7b2f40_large.jpg
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Great program for students to learn more effectively.
