Her Story
About Theda
I've been in healthcare for over 30 years now, working as a medical biller and coder across so many different specialties. I started with hospital billing when I first entered healthcare, and from there I've worked in arthritis, pain management, pediatrics, general surgery (which I love because of the variety of billing), OBGYN, dermatology, psychiatric, and now home healthcare. I actually own my own company called MedTech Office Management, where I do credentialing and help individuals who are just getting started - I get them credentialed with insurance companies and help them start their businesses. When I worked in general surgery, I started a group of surgical assistants and got them all set up. Then when I worked at an OBGYN office, a couple of nurse practitioners wanted to start their own practice, so I helped them too. I was working from home for a while, just setting people up and starting their billing for them. Before healthcare, I spent 13 years at McDonald's, starting as a regular employee and working my way up to store manager - I even went to Hamburger University in Chicago. I left after a robbery at the store, and my husband's cousin, who was already in healthcare, got me into working with her. At my current home healthcare position, I've been there almost 3 years now. When I started, they were 3 months behind because the previous biller had passed away from cancer and nobody knew how to do the work. I got everybody together - the receptionists, the coordinators, everybody - and taught them how to bill in order to get the money in quickly. The doctor has been thriving since then.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Theda
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Just focus, just focus on it, because it's not an easy job. It's not easy. You know, you have to stay focused, and if this is something that you want to do, you just have to stick with it and make sure that this is something that you want to do. Before, it was very, very easy to get a job in billing and coding because that's how I started out doing it, and it was always hands-on training. You could go anywhere and find a job. Now, fast forward to the future, these schools decided they can make money off of this and started teaching people billing, especially when they don't know billing. People went to school for billing and coding and didn't even know how to bill and code. I would call the schools and have some of the kids that were doing internships come in, and they knew nothing. They took their money and didn't train them at all. They couldn't find jobs because they didn't know anything.
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