Ask an NP – Least Expected Things when I Started Working as an NP

00:01 I think the biggest thing was in private practice, outpatient, was coding for your patient visits.

00:10 Most schools don't do a really good job on preparing you for the coding because it's so much different from, if you're working inpatient, you've got all these people working behind you and everything's preset in the EMR.

00:23 But with outpatient, it's kind of up to you to determine what the severity of your patient's symptoms are.

00:30 You have to determine, are you going to perform psychotherapy with this patient? And then you have follow-up visits where, was this just a simple follow-up, then it's coded a lot lesser.

00:40 If it's dealing with two or three acute issues, then you can code it up higher.

00:45 So all that determines on how much money you make.

00:47 So billing and coding is very, very important for a nurse practitioner.