The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA)

When your little you might know what your destined to be or you might not be focused on it. Than when the day comes to start the schooling you hesitate. Looking up ideas of careers becomes repetitive and annoying. Than you get a job doing whatever you could find until one day you realize that you deserve more and want to challenge yourself. For me it wasn’t easy deciding what to do. When I had my son I hadn’t accomplished all I wanted to with a career or schooling. All I knew is that I wanted to do something I liked, benefited from emotionally, mentally and financially and made me happy with the career path I had taken. Then I found it and here I am! Upon looking up schooling for medical billing and coding I discovered information on the

There is the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC) and the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA). The AAPC was founded in 1988, their goal was to provide education and professional certifications to physician based medical coders. They currently have a membership base of over 154,000 worldwide, 107,000 of which are certified. AAPC credentialed coders represent the best in the medical coding career field. AHIMA is now serving over 52 affiliated component stated associations and more than 101,000 health information professionals. The American Health Information Management Association is recognized for being the leading source of HIM knowledge. AHIMA was founded in 1928 and its certificate is considered harder to get compared to

Both have made advances in what they now offer. AHIMA is now offering the CCS-P for coders currently in physician’s offices where as AAPC now offers a CPC-H for coders in outpatient hospital coding. The AAPC offers apprentice status in their credentialing process where as AHIMA doesn’t. Neither have a formal education requirement for coder certification. Although AHIMA does require a bachelor’s degree or associates for their RHIA and RHIT records management certifications. At the moment I’m comfortable with what I’m learning and how I’m understanding the material. With that being said I’m excited, nervous and scared all at the same time about taking the AAPC