Medical Coding (CPC) Foundations
Medical Coding (CPC) Foundations
Medical Coding (CPC) Foundations is a free course for absolute beginners, career-changers, and anyone curious about how a patient visit becomes a paid, compliant claim.
About this course
Medical Coding (CPC) Foundations is a free course for absolute beginners, career-changers, and anyone curious about how a patient visit becomes a paid, compliant claim. The journey begins with what medical coding is and how it sits inside the healthcare revenue cycle, then moves through medical terminology, all three code sets (ICD-10-CM, CPT, and HCPCS Level II), and a real end-to-end mini-case where you code a full encounter yourself. Along the way you will learn to read provider documentation, navigate a code book from Index to Tabular, apply common modifiers, and spot real compliance risks like upcoding and unbundling.
At the completion of this course, learners will be coding-literate — able to understand the whole field and code a simple encounter — and ready to step confidently into full CPC exam preparation.
You will also receive a certificate to showcase your skills and step into the fast-growing world of medical coding.
Course outline
Medical Coding & the CPC Pathway
In this module, you will learn what medical coding is, how it differs from billing, what the Certified Professional Coder (CPC) credential certifies, and the career and earning outlook for certified coders.
The Healthcare Business & the Revenue Cycle
In this module, you will learn how a patient encounter moves through the revenue cycle, where coding determines reimbursement, the main payer types, and the coder’s HIPAA and privacy obligations.
Medical Terminology & Anatomy Essentials for Coders
In this module, you will learn how to decode medical terms from their roots, prefixes, and suffixes, understand anatomy at the depth coding requires, and find the codable story in provider documentation.
The Three Code Sets — The Coder’s Toolkit
In this module, you will learn the purpose, scope, and maintainer of each code set—ICD-10-CM, CPT, and HCPCS Level II—and how diagnosis and procedure codes combine on a single claim.
ICD-10-CM Foundations (Diagnoses)
In this module, you will learn the anatomy of an ICD-10-CM code, the two-step Index-to-Tabular search, and the core conventions (such as Excludes1 vs. Excludes2) that determine the correct diagnosis code.
CPT & Modifiers Foundations (Procedures)
In this module, you will learn how the CPT code set is organized, how to locate a procedure code, and how to choose and justify the common modifiers that keep a claim clean.
HCPCS Level II & Putting It All Together
In this module, you will learn when HCPCS Level II applies and how to sequence the full end-to-end coding workflow, coding a complete patient encounter across all three code sets.
Compliance, Ethics & Your Path to CPC
In this module, you will learn to recognize compliance and ethics risks such as upcoding and unbundling, understand how the CPC exam is structured, and build a personalized study roadmap toward certification.
Get access to the complete curriculum once you enroll in the course
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