The type of resume format you choose will dictate the structure of your resume. If you have an extensive work history in medical billing, either as a billing supervisor, a coding specialist or another related job title, you should use the chronological resume format. If you don’t have a lot of experience working in a medical office, you can use a functional resume format that focuses on skills. A combination resume format is a great option for candidates who want to show off both their skills and experience to hiring managers.
Regardless of the
resume format you choose, your resume will contain the following sections:
- Contact information
- Resume summary
- Skills
- Work experience
- Education
Contact information
The resume header section contains your contact information. You should include your name, email address, and phone number. You can also include a link to your professional profile on LinkedIn. Be sure that all your contact information is correct so the recruiter can contact you to schedule a job interview.
Resume summary or objective
The next section is the resume summary or resume objective. This is a short 2-3 sentence paragraph designed to catch the hiring manager’s attention. In the resume summary, you will highlight your most significant accomplishments and skills related to being a medical biller. This can include your knowledge of medical terminology and healthcare billing. However, if you are a recent graduate or have little work experience, you will want to write a resume objective instead and simply state your career goals.
When you write your resume summary or resume objective, select keywords from the job description and weave them into this section. This will help the hiring manager understand your fit for the role and also increase the chances of your resume being selected by an ATS.
Skills
Medical billers need specialist skills to process patient accounts and work with insurance companies. So, your skills section is important to creating the perfect resume. Your skills section should contain a good mixture of hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills are role-specific and soft skills are transferable across many industries.
If you can’t think of the right terms, to sum up your knowledge and abilities, here are some skills typically found on a medical billing resume sample:
- Communication skills
- Organizational skills
- Data entry
- CPT coding
- Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint)
- Insurance claims handling
- Medical claims management
- Patient information and data privacy
- Medical insurance liaison
- Knowledge of healthcare providers
- Explanation of benefits
- Auditing
- Medical records processing
- Health insurance portability and accountability act (HIPAA)
- Administrative assistant skills
Work history
Although medical billers don’t need extensive years of experience, having experience in insurance billing, patient billing, administration and working within insurance carriers will give you useful skills. List all your relevant job history in the work experience section of your resume. You will want to include 4-6 bullet points using action verbs to describe your duties for each job. For example, you could include quantifiable data regarding the number of patients you helped which will evidence your experience and skills.
List your previous jobs in reverse chronological order, starting from the most recent job. Then, under each job title, you should also include your employer’s details such as the company name, and the date you started and finished.
Only include up to 10 years of experience. If you have work experience that is older than that, include it on your LinkedIn profile so the recruiter can review it there.
Education
Medical billing applicants might need an associate degree and high school diploma to qualify for a role. You can list your degree and the year you graduated. Also include any relevant certifications, such as:
- American Health Information Management Association
- American Academy of Professional Coders
- Healthcare administration
- Health information management