AA in Healthcare Reimbursement from Virginia College Online

How Can I Get This Degree? The healthcare reimbursement protocol is extremely important in many hospitals, medical buildings, and doctor’s offices. Focusing in specialized training in medical billing and coding for health service reimbursement procedures, this degree program is offered through Virginia College’s online program. The associate degree program, which requires a total of 96 credit hours, is composed of general education courses, areas of concentration, and foundations. The area of concentration, 60 credit hours, includes courses in anatomy and physiology, medical coding, medical billing, advanced billing, medical law, and medical insurance applications. The foundation area of the degree, 12 credit hours, focuses on keyboarding, planning, and learning the basics, while the general education area, 24 credit hours, includes courses in communications, humanities and fine arts, mathematics, and social science. Financial aid assistance is available to students that meet the requirements to qualify.

What Can I Do With This Degree? With the completion of this program, students will have the knowledge and abilities to deal with medical records, medical and billing software, analyze financial and accounting data, and a number of other key components to operate well in a healthcare reimbursement position. Graduates of this degree are prepared for positions in medical offices, hospital business offices, insurance companies, and healthcare consulting firms. Popular jobs in this field are medical transcriptionists, medical billing technicians and medical coding technicians. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, medical transcriptionists earned a median annual salary of $32,060 in 2008, the most recent information available by the bureau. Employment change projected by the bureau, estimated an increase of at least 11% in new jobs and availability by 2018.