Omega Healthcare, a leading offshore provider of healthcare outsourcing services, recently announced an aim to upgrade more than 2,000 employees as AAPC certified coders, on top of the 500 already certified coders in the organisation. This will be an Omega-sponsored certification and at no cost to the employees.
There 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 U.S., Middle East and India. This market segment is growing at 17% CAGR in the US (Source: Kaulkin Ginsberg Report).
"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. At Omega, we are gearing up to meet the demand by training and offering AAPC certification for our coders. This effort is unprecedented in the history of the industry and sets Omega far apart from its competitors," said Gopi Natarajan, Co-Founder & CEO of Omega Healthcare.
He further added, "Our medical coding team is the largest in the country and we have always focused on providing a better experience to our employees. Getting our employees AAPC certified before and also just after the conversion to ICD-10, will give them an edge over the others in the industry".
Omega Healthcare believes in good HR practices and provides a continuous learning environment for its employees to enhance their skills. As a part of this organisational philosophy, employees are given opportunities to upgrade their skills on a regular basis. In addition, they can choose from core AAPC certifications like CPC®, COC®, CIC®, etc., along with 20 other specialty certifications. This training course will consist of approximately 100 - 150 hours of training, and includes 3 mock assessments.
The organisation is expected to have more than 2,500 AAPC certified coders by the end 2016, thus able to provide optimal service-levels to the US healthcare industry.