Medical Billing and Coding Training in Summer’s Swelter

Trying to complete your medical billing and coding training during the height of the summer’s heat and other distractions is as hard.  Its equally hard for people working on other projects from earning a certified nursing assistant degree to focusing on the needs of patients while working in a medical office.  The tendency is to want to slow down, or even take some time away from studies/work to go loaf at the pool, or in the air condition somewhere.  In fact, recent studies indicate that worker productivity slumps by as much as 20% in the summer months. The cool geeks over at www.lifehacker.com put together a “how to” piece, full of tips on how to maintain high levels of productivity in spite of seasonal distractions. The list includes advice ranging from changing the thermostat setting to switching up your work routine to working during different hours.  Not all of these may be feasible for those who’ve completed their medical billing and coding training and now maintain set working hours in a medical office.  However for students still studying medical billing and coding, certified nursing assistant training or any of the other courses offered here at the Allen School, these suggestions may just be what the doctor ordered.  Click here to read LifeHacker’s interesting article and sound off in the comments about how you beat the heat and stay focused on the work all summer long.

The Medical Assistant of Tomorrow

I found this excellent chart courtesy of BoingBoing.net.  Originally featured in an editorial in  the New England Journal of Medicine, the chart demonstrates just how far medicine has come in the last 100 years.  Not only are far fewer people dying per capital of disease, but so many afflictions, diseases and disorders have been cured.  This is an amazing recent record of achievement, discovery and improvements in technology and human knowledge.  As medicine has taken this quantum leap, medical office personnel – certified nursing assistants and medical assistants have been an instrumental part of the process.  Its interesting to think what the roles, functions and duties of CNAs and medical assistants may have looked like 100 years ago.  Or what nursing assistant training programs may have consisted of?  Likely, the difference would be about as dramatic as the difference in this chart.