Setting a New Standard

Increasingly, it looks like being triple-board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Disease, and Cardiac Electrophysiology will no longer be enough to differentiate yourself amongst your colleagues since board certification is becoming a pre-requisite for employment at big medical centers.

Fortunately, there's still a way I can rise above the pack now that our new billing and coding scheme called ICD-10 is coming 1 October 2013. I just learned that I can earn my CCC™ credential:

What are the benefits of a CCC™ credential?

• Distinguish yourself from your colleagues


• Earn up to 28% more than a noncertified coder (as revealed in the 2008 AAPC salary survey)


• Boost your career opportunities


• Fine-tune your cardiology coding knowledge to maximize your practice’s reimbursement

(And we wonder why health care costs as much as it does...)

And while this example is rather tongue-in-cheek, the real question as states move to mandate that doctors accept payment rates defined by insurers as a condition of licensure is this: will doctors be able to preserve the right to have a cash-only practice and still be able to obtain licensure? Certainly others have demonstrated that this cash-only model, devoid of bureaucratic overhead, is not only viable (video), but saves money.

In my view, this should be the fundamental political rallying point for all physicians and physicians' organizations, including the American Medical Association, as we move forward to sculpt our health care system of the future.

Anything less invalidates the fundamental tenets required to maintain the doctor-patient relationship.

-Wes