You'll learn:
A medical coder is a part of the administrative department in the healthcare industry.
They deal with tasks such as reviewing patient records, encoding patients’ data, and detailing charges for creating insurance claims and bills for patients.
🔎 Fact: As medical coders and medical billers have to work closely together, people may be confused with their roles. While a medical coder handles coding problems involving a patient’s medical record, a medical biller helps with the process of calculating insurance bills and creating invoices for patients.
With technical-involving aspects of the role, a medical coder resume should be able to demonstrate the applicant’s computer literacy, data analysis, encoding capabilities along with medical knowledge for further assessment of a patient.
You may encounter several issues when making a medical coder resume, but we are here to help you out!
A resume headline is one brief sentence providing the employer with information about your current job title and your most outstanding achievement.
A well-structured and concise resume headline has a higher tendency to impress employers.
Examples of medical coder resume headlines:
Example of a lead medical coder resume headline:
Goal-driven lead medical professional with 10 years of experience in medical coding
A professional medical coder resume summary often consists of 2-3 sentences briefing your entire resume with details of your pitching skills and most valuable experience or achievement.
Structuring an on-point resume summary helps you stand out among hundreds of other applicants.
Example of a professional medical coder resume summary:
Detail-orientated and IT-certified individual with knowledge of CPT coding procedures and related coding software. Obtained 4 years of experience working for a medical data entry agency, handling a daily database of over 250 patients.
Example of an entry-level medical coder resume summary:
Hardworking and attentive medical coder with a bachelor’s degree in Medical Management. Possess experience in a fast-paced medical-working environment with requirements of expertise in coding set testing and evaluation.
Example of a certified medical coder resume summary:
CPC®-certified lead medical coder with 5 years experience in assigning ICD and CPT codes to patients’ records with a rate of 98% accuracy. Obtaining strong knowledge of coding guidelines and analytical skills.
Listing down relevant skills for the job vacancy is a must, as it provides the employers with information to assess whether or not you obtain the skills needed for the position.
Spending time on polishing the skills section in the medical coder resume will help increase your opportunity of getting hired.
Below is how the skill section on a medical coder resume might look like:
Soft skills |
- Interpersonal skills - Communication skills - Decision making - Attention to detail - Time management |
Hard skills |
- HCPCS Level I codes - Computer competencies - Microsoft Office - Healthcare guidelines knowledge - Speed data-encoding |
It’s important that you look for medical coder resume key phrases to include in your resume bearing in mind that each job description comes with different requirements.
Tailoring your medical resume accordingly will increase your level of relevancy, which is often even more important than competency.
To ensure that your medical coder resume is mistake-free, it’s necessary that you go through every detail upon finishing the resume.
Especially with a field requiring a high level of carefulness like medical coding, your flawless medical coder resume can help portrait your mindfulness.
Depending on your job-hunting purposes, you should look for a compatible medical coder resume format type to best represent yourself.
Commonly, there are four forms of resumes:
When it comes to drafting a medical coder resume, it’s of prime importance that you take references of medical coder resume examples for the general structure and section order. With ideas in mind, you can then start to design a template that suits your needs.
There are two common ways to design a medical coder resume, using either Microsoft Word or an online resume builder like Cake.
💡 Note: You should save your medical coder resume as a PDF file to avoid issues of readability when opening.
✅ Tailor the resume and include only relevant information.
Stating irrelevant information in your medical coder resume will expose your lack of dedication when applying. Therefore you should keep your medical coder resume concise with relevant sections.
✅ Add quantifiable and measurable achievements.
You should present your achievements in a measurable way as accomplishments in quantifiable numbers appear more comprehensible and credible in the employers’ eyes.
For Example, "Monitored a database of 200 daily patients and implemented record analytics for boosting data processing by 15%."
✅ Optimize the resume for ATS.
ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is a system employing algorithms to scan content and sort out resumes, which is currently favored by a number of employers.
By adopting medical coder resume keywords to secure an ATS-friendly format, your resume is more likely to proceed.
✅ Choose the right resume format.
It’s important to adopt a resume format that best describes your strengths without exposing your weakness. Depending on your applying purposes, you can choose among 4 above mentioned resume formats.
✅ Use action verbs in the resume.
Verbs often exhibit a stronger sense, along with a bigger volume of self-confidence than other word forms.
Using action verbs in your medical coder resume will help you stand out among others.
Some active verbs include: Monitored, Implemented, Processed, Assessed, Handled.
❌ Mix up a resume with a CV.
It’s important not to mistake a resume for a CV.
While a medical coder resume often focuses on demonstrating relevant information for the purpose of job-hunting, a CV lists out comprehensive details on one’s lifetime professional and academic achievements.
❌ Adopt an old-style resume objective statement.
If you are making a medical coder resume with no experience, you should skip the resume summary and craft a medical coder resume objective that helps showcase your goals along with your skills and potential contribution.
❌ Disclose confidential information about previous employers.
Confidential information always remains a sensitive topic among businesses. Therefore, avoiding revealing confidential information concerning your previous work is an effective way to strike an impression as a professional and credible candidate.
Some confidential content to avoid in medical coder resumes includes clients’ names, confidentiality agreements, business financial reports, etc.
❌ Include unnecessary personal details that might lead to discrimination.
You might find yourself a victim of discrimination such as age, sexual orientation, marital status, etc. when mentioning too many details in your medical coder resume that are irrelevant for the assessment process.
❌ Send the resume as a Word doc.
A resume in a Word doc version will put you at risk since it may encounter issues of font, format, or presentation. Therefore it’s best to convert your medical coder resume into a PDF file before submitting it.
Medical Coder with 4 year experience in implementing encoding practices
Phone: (712) 471 8875
Email: [email protected]
Result-driven and attentive Medical Coder Specialist experienced in implementing healthcare guidelines and employing data-encoding practices for monitoring and track-recording profiles of 2000+ patients.
Medical Coder
Chesterton NorthShore Health Center | Chesterton, NV
04/2018-03/2020
Medical Coder
Health University Hospital | Alabama, NV
09/2016-01/2018
BA of Health Analytics
Adelphi University, Brooklyn
Class of 2012
Soft skills
- Time management
- Interpersonal skills
- Teamwork
- Communication
- Decision making
Hard skills
- MS Office
- Project management
- Encoding software
- Healthcare guideline knowledge
- HCPCS Level II codes
--- Originally written by May Luong ---
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