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Omega Healthcare partners with AAPC to train 2000 employees

Our Bureau, Bengaluru | Tuesday, June 9, 2015, 13:15 Hrs [IST]

Omega Healthcare, a leading offshore provider of healthcare outsourcing services, has inked an alliance with AAPC with an aim to upgrade more than 2,000 employees as AAPC certified coders. This is over and above its existing 500 certified coders in the company.

The company will continue its sponsored certification and at no cost to the employees.

AAPC is USA’s largest medical coding training and certification association for medical coders and medical coding jobs. The 27-year old association was set up to provide education and professional certification to medical coders and to elevate the standards of medical coding by providing student training, certification with ongoing education, networking and job opportunities.

According to the Kaulkin Ginsberg Report, there is a is growing evidence that implementation of ICD-10 is the next big step that will change the healthcare sector in the United States and the outsourcing industry, creating a huge demand for certified medical coders in the US, Middle East and India. This market segment is growing at 17 per cent CAGR in the US.

“Medical coding offers huge growth potential due to healthcare reforms in the US creating the need for more processing jobs. The conversion of ICD-9 to ICD-10 coding system to be implemented this year has provided great impetus to the healthcare outsourcing industry. We are gearing up to meet the demand by training and offering AAPC certification for our coders,” said Gopi Natarajan, co-founder & chief executive officer Omega Healthcare.

“Our medical coding team is the largest in the country. Our employees can become certified coders just after the conversion to ICD-10 is planned, providing them an edge over the others in the industry. In fact, we would have over 2,500 AAPC certified coders by the end of 2016 to provide optimal service-levels to the US healthcare industry, ” he added.

According to the company, employees are given opportunities to upgrade their skills on a regular basis. They could choose from core certifications like CPC, COC, CIC, etc., along with 20 other speciality certifications. The training course is for around 100 – 150 hours of training, and includes 3 mock assessments.

Comments

Debbie French	Jun 18, 2015 2:52 AM
Very nice of AAPC to offer this training to foreign employees for FREE, but we, as members, have to pay, per person, at our local AAPC chapters to get a webinar! I thought we were members of the AMERICAN Academy of Professional Coders?

Margie Bogash

Jun 11, 2015 2:35 AM

How can become eligible to get trained for free? I am currently unemployed and have been able to take a course in billing and coding, but unfortunately the certification with the NHA is not good for a job. I could hope for a chance. I have 32 years medical experience and about 2 years of billing and coding experience. I felt that becoming certified would help, but the school apparently never checked what certs were acceptable.

Margaret Goodlin

Jun 10, 2015 10:21 PM

Do you know what happens when you export jobs overseas? Pay decreases HERE. I'm a medical transcriptionist who would go into coding if I weren't 66 years old. The reason is that so many transcription companies are moving our jobs to India, where at least 1 company (Nuance) is paying $125 a MONTH for their transcriptionists. How can we compete? We are currently paid at a rate that nets me $8.50 an hour. Others tell me it was much better years ago. But now, we cannot compete because if we complain, more jobs will go overseas.
What you are doing with Omega is dangerous to your profession, and your coders will not thank you.

Belinda Keeling

Jun 10, 2015 1:07 AM

How nice of Omega and AAPC to offer such a wonderful career path for foreigners. Those who do not speak, or understand the English language or let alone appreciate the USA. Except, they are more than happy to take our jobs and food of the table. I am appalled to be associated with an organization who would dare to take valued jobs from us to give the USA a tax break by hiring out cheap inadequate labor! Continuing to outsource labor does not benefit us in the east, it will only continue to prompt governmental dependence. Maybe that is what you want, but I like being able to pay my bills and EARN a living. There will be no thank you for taking away my job opportunities and there will be no commendations for such unacceptable, deplorable action, and to make it sound like it is a good thing sickens me!