The job responsibilities of a medical assistant ranges can from front-office paperwork to hands-on patient care. Depending on the employer, a medical assistant may do all of these tasks or just one area. If you want to be prepared to apply for a wide range of medical assistant positions offered employers, you’ll want to be well trained in all of these categories.
Patient care training.
Medial assistant training programs should help students be comfortable with drawing blood, treating wounds, preparing for surgical procedures, removing sutures and more. If providing this level of physical assistance on a daily basis sounds appealing to you, training to be a medical assistant may be a good fit for you.
Front office training.
Well-rounded medical assistant programs should offer training for front office tasks such as greeting patients, updating charts with height, weight, blood pressure and symptoms as well as recording medical histories.
Medical billing and coding training.
Beyond typical front office administrative duties, medical billing and coding skills may be required for a medical assistant. That’s why quality medical assistant programs should provide training for both ICD-9 and ICD-10 coding and an overview for the billing process. Knowing what to expect in communications with an insurance company as it relates to billing and coding should be part of the training.
Hands-on training through an externship.
Nothing beats hands-on training. That's why it's important, especially when you're learning to provide healthcare services for a real patient, to get experience with real people in a real healthcare environment. Learning to draw blood and remove stitches is best learned in person.
To learn more about the range of training you should expect from an accredited healthcare career school, visit UMA’s medical assistant programs page. There you’ll find an informative video overview and more details about the courses you would take as a student.