passing the CPC exam is one of the biggest milestones in a medical coder's career and with the right tools and resources you can do it very confidently in this video I'm going to share some of my top tips for preparing for the CPC exam including training programs study guides practice materials tools you can use and more today's video is sponsored by ioder but more on them in just a minute now the CPC exam has changed a lot over the years which is why you need to make sure that you are going directly through the aapc to get the most upto-date information which I will link below but it used to be that the exam was 5 hours and 40 minutes when was 150 questions and sometimes you'll still see some suggestions about that out there you'll still see people say that it's 150 questions it's not the CPC exam is 100 multiple choice questions now there is some talk that perhaps maybe in 2025 or even later they may add in some fill-in-the blank questions as of the date of recording this that's kind of been put on the back burner with the aapc so right now we still have 100 multiple choice questions the passing score is a 70% overall so even if you get all the questions wrong in one section if you still get a 70% overall you pass and every question is worth one point there's no waiting or grading to questions so one little question asking you about midterm is the equivalent weight of something that is a two-page off Note that's one of the reasons that I have lots of different videos on this channel that are here are your strategies for passing the exam and then also some things are like okay well here's real world coding cases when we're not doing multiple choice those are two separate buckets that we have to focus on now as far as taking the exam you can do a live remote Proctor which means you set up your desktop or your laptop you set up an external webcam so that someone can watch you and make sure that you're not cheating during the exam the second option is to do an inperson exam Center I'll link below where you can see where the Exam Center cities are they don't give you the exact location of them until you actually go to schedule but in either case you will be taking the exam on an online electronic platform there are no paper examinations and they are graded electronically and usually it's within a few hours although they do say to give 7 to 10 business days only just in case like they determine there's some kind of weird exam pattern like you were maybe trying to click things that you shouldn't have been too many times and they kind of want to have a physical person like lay eyes on that a little bit now as far as the structure of the exam it covers the whole gamut of medical coding it covers a lot of CPT some ICD 10cm tiny little bit of hips for the CPT questions everything from the 10,000 series to the 90,000 series each of those 10,000 sections will have six questions with the exception of anesthesia anesthesia there's only four anesthesia questions there are some non-coding things for example there's four questions on Med term four on anatomy and then there's five questions on ICD 10cm only three questions on hipic now that's not to say there aren't any other questions that might have hick pics as part of like coding the case but there's only three questions that are specifically going to be asking you to code for the hipic code and then there's a few compliance and Regulatory questions there's three of those and they can test you on things like what's the difference between Medicare part A and Medicare Part B and Medicare Part D they're going to test you on place of service codes n CCI edits so bundling or even things like hippo regulations as far as starting your training in medical billing and coding I have some videos if you're interested in self-study that is not for everyone which I go through very in depth in my self-study videos and making sure that you get a training program that's kind of focused towards the CPC as a goal is really great that doesn't mean you have to get it through the a PC there's a lot of licensed educational institutions and instructors that have the official APC curriculum and sometimes people actually learn better without that curriculum there's another one that's common the step-by-step medical coding and I used to teach with that and I actually prefer it versus the aapc curriculum you can go directly through the aapc for your training a lot of people do that sometimes you can get great bundles where they'll be like here's your training here's your books here's your PRX here's your membership here's your exam fee and we'll bundle it all together and give it to you at kind of a discounted price and you can definitely check check out Tech schools and colleges in your area as well I would recommend not spending more than maybe $4,000 unless you're getting an associates degree because there's lots of programs that can do it for significantly less like preppy which is the one that I recommend I don't want to get too far into just beginner level training or coding 101 for this video but if you want to find out more about a career in medical coding just in general head to my free masterclass at medical coding masterclass.com now as far as preparing for the exam one of the biggest Keys here is that you have to understand your guidelines and how to apply codes and interpret things this is not going to be a simple code lookup examination it's not going to be like look up the code for a wound of the right foot or look up a code for a conjunctive itis of the left eye it's really testing you on application so you really have to familiarize yourself with the guidelines or at least where to find things in the guidelines you don't have to memorize all of the guidelines but know to navigate through them and know at least a baseline knowledge enough that if if you're looking at something and you're like oh this is a case on sepsis you know what I know there's some coding guidelines in icd10 cm on in sepsis and I know where to find them so I can check how I'm supposed to sequence this or how I'm supposed to apply the codes one tool that can help you really accelerate your studies is ey coder and they just launched this amazing new add-on called code Vision all you do is go into the app and then you click on this little button it'll bring up your camera and you can take pictures of things like your codee book like your practice questions like your study information and it will detect on that image where there is a code and automatically bring them up in ioder so you could take a picture of an image in your code book or a presentation or your slides you could sit in class and take a picture of your teacher having codes up on the screen and it will bring them up automatically in ioder so while you're working through something instead of having to flip through the book 50 times to find all of these different codes you can have them right at your fingertips which is great because then you can see the code descriptions the rvus the HCC values the global periods and a lot more say goodbye to tedious searches and hello to faster smarter coating and there's a lot of other really cool Tools in ioder I love their wound calculators and the different integumentary system ones that they have their ncci init Checker and you can try it free for 30 days at ioder doapp and I don't know about you guys but my phone is certainly a lot less heavy than a big bulky code book so head over to ioder check the link in the description and you can sign up today now one of the top things that will help you out with passing the CPC exam is going through the official practice exams that you buy on aapc.com the format and everything will be very similar to what you will see on the actual CPC exam they don't reuse the same questions so you won't see questions that are on your practice exams or in your studies on the CPC exam they have a separate Bank of questions but there's some that will be similar in nature so for example you might have a practice exam question that asks you about removing a 2 cm lesion on the forarm with an intermediate closure and then your actual exam Bank might have one that's a 1 and 1 12 CM uh Legion removal of the scalp and they do a different type of closure so it's testing you on that same concept but it's a variation of the same coding group or section and also it is in the same platform that the actual exam will be on so you can practice things like bringing up the calculator flagging a question skipping a question how to submit your answer all of that you can learn ahead of time instead of trying to figure out how to maneuver through the application on exam day and practice your timing that is a big thing because this is a timed exam you don't want to find out that you're getting the right answers but you're not getting them fast enough and you need to pick up the pace a little bit again there are certain things we do that are exam strategy versus this is what we do in the real world coding if we're looking at something and we're like I think I'm like 95% confident that this is it without having to look it up in the tabular list for exam you have to kind of weigh those risks and then review the sections where you're not doing so well and double down on your studies for those areas next there's the aapc study guide so if you have the official training through the APC or an approved vendor you will have a CPC training textbook there's also a CPC study guide if you have the textbook basically the study guide is an bridged version of the textbook but it kind of hones in on specific Concepts and areas that they really want you to know for the exam things that are more likely to appear in the questions in those exam Banks so you can kind of pair that study guide with some of your other trainings and it'll be a good tool to look at and be like okay so here's what they're saying to focus on in the study guide so maybe there's some things that I need to write in my book as far as notes or sections that I need to highlight and and understand where your areas of focus need to be next is CPC review courses they've been offering these a lot more now because the chapters are losing money CU they're not hosting exams so they have to do things like review classes to get money to maintain their local chapters so a lot of them will either host a seminar or have a review class annually and those review classes are becoming more abundant so if your local chapter doesn't have one you might find another local chapter that does and around $50 to $100 is what you'll find them for sometimes cheaper depending on what chapter you go through and they are through someone who has either gone through appropriate training or is an approved education instructor with the aapc and also I know this is is funny because it doesn't really pertain to medical coding but you do have to master the logistics of just where you're supposed to go and what you're supposed to do on exam day for example you have to bring a photo ID and that photo ID has to match the name that is registered on your eapc account because if you get to the exam Center and your name doesn't match if it says a different last name or a different variation they might tell you that you can't take that exam and I do not want that to happen to anyone so make sure that your photo ID that you're taking to your exam or have for your remote Proctor matches your name on your aapc account and as far as books you're allowed to take your ICD 10cm your CPT and your hips you are allowed no other books you're not allowed pencils pens highlighters magnifying glasses nothing like that there is talk that in 2025 sometime they might allow ebooks for use but that's still forthcoming and we don't know all the details of what's going to happen and what that will look like for inperson exams I would say dress in layers in case it's a little too cold or a little too warm you have maybe a a sweater or something you can take off and pack as little as you can because while there will likely be lockers that you can store your things in and get the key and take that into your exam Center you don't want to have an entire backpack that you're trying to shove in there or a whole roller cart for your books so try to pack a little bit light because they might only have a locker that's maybe like a 1 foot by one foot and if you're trying to shove a huge backpack with all kinds of stuff in there it can complicate things and for online exams make sure that you have the right equipment so you can't have a second monitor running you have to have an external webcam meaning that you have something that's separate from just like if you have a laptop they often comes with that webcam that's right at the top it has to be external you can't use that camera reason being is because they need to have the camera like pointed and angle so they can see you at your keyboard and see what you're doing with your books and make sure that you're not you know slipping papers out from under your desk that you're not supposed to have so when the aapc sends you instructions for your exam day please please please read them very thoroughly time management is super important you only have 4 hours so you need to know ahead of time how to maneuver through the exam platform how to open up the notepad so that you can jot down things and do process of elimination if you can afford the practice exams they do have demos on the APC website so you can see them showing you how to skip a question how to submit your question how to navigate through the exam how to flag questions how to bring up the enm calculators because we have to have that appropriate exam strategy remember every question is worth one point so if you're looking at a question you're like I think this is going to take me a while to get through this you need to know how to easily skip that flag it and come back later and kind of like keep cool focus on my CPC exam day I actually was like singing The Mary Tyler Moore theme song on the way into my exam you know the you're going to make it after all cuz I was just convincing myself mentally that this is just a technicality I've got this in the bag and you have to keep that positive mindset as much as you can and I know exams are very anxious for some people but you have to remind yourself that you have done a lot of hard work and just try to remember that you know you need to focus on what you're doing but also keep a little bit of an eye on that time because if you're getting down to the to the last couple of minutes and you have a bunch of unanswered questions it's better to select something than leave questions unanswered because if you select something you have a one in four chance of getting it right if you don't select anything then it's it's automatically wrong so again the exam is not just about code lookup it's about really understanding the guidelines knowing how to apply them having the appropriate resources that you're using getting the right training and using tools like the appropriate study guides like the right practice exams the reason I say to go through the on from the APC it's not just because I love the aapc which I do and I will fully admit that I am biased in that way but I've had a lot of people tell me that they've bought things on Amazon or on Instagram or eBay and it's just not been good materials trust me with the right preparation tools you have got this I will see you guys in the next video and until then just keep on coding on