CPC (Certified Professional Coder) by AAPC (American Association of Professional Coders) is the most renowned and globally acclaimed credential for medical coders. It requires rigorous training in medical coding (ICD, CPT, HCPCS) and thorough practice if you want to clear CPC certification.
Exam overview
Exam structure – CPC is an open book exam (proctored) with 150 multiple choice questions to be attempted in 5 hours 40 minutes.
Exam syllabus- Apart from general topics as medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, detailed exam syllabus consists of topics from CPT – 10000 Series, 20000 Series, 30000 Series, 40000 Series, 50000 Series, 60000 Series, Evaluation and Management, Anesthesia, Radiology, Laboratory, Pathology, Medicine, ICD-10-CM/Diagnosis, HCPCS Level II, Coding Guidelines, Regulatory Compliances etc.
Check for the most updated exam syllabus at official website of AAPC.
Exam preparation tips
CPC exam consists of a lot of topics, so it is easy for someone to get easily overwhelmed during preparation. Here are some quick preparation tips to tackle it.
As you can see above, during exam, there may be more questions to relate to CPT codes than ICD-10-CM codes or HCPCS. So it will advisable to give more focus on this area while preparing. Practice well by knowing CPT manual back to front and develop quick navigation skills by using it appendices.
Develop a very strong knowledge of medical vocabulary also as you can expect questions referring to anatomy and physiology terminology as ‘what type of a bone is this?’ etc. Focus on ICD-10-CM and HCPCS too to be thorough with navigations and indexes.
Once you’re done with the basics, it is important to take as many practice exams as possible. Don’t take a casual approach, but treat these mock exams too as real ones and keep a track of your speed and accuracy.
Leading training institutes like Spectrum provides you opportunity to undergo many mock tests after training to prepare for exams as well as to enhance working skills on medical coding. Doing this back to back will help you understand your weak areas to prepare again. Practice until you become a consistent 90% scorer on practice tests to reassure yourself for real CPC exam.
Exam day tips
While on test, you have to focus on the below aspects.
Time management is everything
Rather than viewing the test as a whole to be completed within the stipulated time frame, you can try and set a section-wise time split targets as 2-1/2 hours for Section A, 1-1/2 hours for Section B, one hour for Section C etc. It is also a smart approach to split the entire CPC exam to 5 groups of 30 questions each and set one hour time for each group. You may even try 20 minutes for 10 questions. Try this approach during your mock tests itself, which will help to identify your most comfortable split through trial and error.
Finding right answer vis-à-vis ruling out wrong choices
You can try to infer the differences between the choices and then start to work on solving the question. With this approach, you can instantly strike down the wrong choices and such a deductive approach will let you focus only on remaining choices to solve questions in a speedy manner.
Be Strategic with lengthy reports
There in no need to panic on seeing lengthy reports out there. Similar to the above tip, here also starting with the choices may be an easier approach. Understand the differences between the choices, which will make your reading of report more insightful. Underline the facts while reading based on choices you already explored. With this tactic, you need not have to read reports multiple times and that offers smart time saving benefits.
Medical terminology and anatomy
There are no smart options in terms of anatomy and medical terminology than having a thorough foundation on these topics. If you find difficulty with some questions even after a good preparation, refer to ICD-10-CM and CPT indexes which may help to solve these. You can refer to the terms on index, check for referring notes, parenthetical notes, code descriptions, and illustrations to get a better insight.
Above all, it is essential to know you goals. Keep in mind that you need to score a clear 70% or more in the test. General knowledge questions are the same as multi-part questions which may want to you to look up for four or five codes. If you stuck with a particular question, don’t hesitate to skip and then come back to it later.
CPC exam is more about assessing your functional skills, so someone who is well trained and practiced need not have to worry about facing it. Spectrum medical coding training and practice is fully focused on not only helping coding career aspirants from different backgrounds to clear CPC exam, but also to make them fully employable as professional medical coders.
Author: Arun Kumar Anthore
Is an HR Recruiter cum Career Guidance professional with many years of experience in IT recruitment and career / educational counseling.
