Jobs abound for medical coders  

Category: Coding

Two oversized flat-panel computer displays stand waiting for Pat Pilant. One feeds her an avalanche of hospital patient charts: hundreds of pages choked with obscure medical jargon, ambiguous abbreviations -- pure gibberish to the uninitiated.

But for Pilant, a medical coding specialist, "it's like reading a mystery novel." Each case begins with a stricken patient. Doctors and nurses puzzle over symptoms, hazard a diagnosis and attempt treatments. Are they right? Will the treatment work?

Pilant pours over each chart, some running to 300 pages or more. Entering a mental zone of concentration, she resolves conflicts, fills in gaps, and distills the jumble of information into a neat set of codes. The codes specify the charges billed to insurers and government health plans for each hospital stay. Increasingly, researchers are using coded hospital data for such uses as tracki...