Medical Billing Training : How to Avoid the Scams

Medical billing training ads are all over the internet. "Make huge money in Medical Billing...Work from home...enormous opportunity...." and on and on. While medical billing can be a viable career for some, people looking for a career change should excercise caution before signing up for any coursework that makes promises that seem too good to be true. Though many online courses are legitimate, others deliver significantly less than they promise.

Lucy fell for the ads, like so many others before her. Lucy had been a successful hairdresser for years when a car accident caused a back injury which had not been resolved despite several years of treatment. Standing on her feet all day was almost impossible for Lucy, so she decided to enroll in an online medical billing course to pave the way for a career change.

Lucy juggled part time hairdressing work, her family and home to put in many hours studying her new field. The coursework appeared thorough, and after about a year and several thousand dollars, Lucy finished her coursework and began looking for a job.

Lucy sent out her resume to countless medical offices and hospitals, with no luck. She had no experiece, and no one would hire her without it. Now she was in real need of the job placement assistance her program had promised. But here is where the program broke down: Lucy reported that their "assistance" amounted to a re-listing of the jobs she had already found on her own on the various job boards found online. Frustrated after working hard for months, Lucy has still not found employment in the medical billing field.

So what can be done to avoid this experience? First, do your homework thoroughly for any medical billing training you are considering. It is not enough to read their literature; almost any program can be made to sound good.

Go deeper and get specifics: for example, HOW will they help you with job placement? Ask to speak with someone who has actually gone through the program What steps did their job-placement team take to assist them with getting a job? If a graduate of the program is "unavailable", that may be a red flag for that particular program.

Check into the experience and credentials of both the people running the program and those who actually teach the courses. They should have solid work experience in the medical billing field, and ideally currently be doing medical billing themselves. If none of the instructors is currently active in doing medical billing, that may be a warning sign. Many instructors from good programs actively work in medical billing and teach on the side.

Digging deeper will help you differentiate between a legitimate medical billing training opportunity and a scam.

Even better than coursework may be on-the-job-training. See more ideas at
EverythingMedicalBilling where we'll even share some of our best ideas on getting free medical billing training.