Hey Guys, I managed to pass the CCS exam. I thought I would share a few things about that. First off, if you have not had a Pearson Vue experience, you need to be prepared. It will feel like you are trying to exit North Korea. Your shoes will be checked, your arms and legs will be checked, your pockets will be emptied, all your jewelry except wedding rings will be need to be left in the locker, as will your cell phone, wallet, keys etc. They do not touch you, but will ask that you show them. You take nothing into the exam room except what they give you and your drivers license, your second form of ID will need to be left in the locker. Mentally prepare yourself for this. If your brain is still reeling from that experience when you sit down in front of the computer you will have a hard time getting started. Pearson Vue offers a free little exam thing you can download, the exam has nothing to do with coding, but it does allow you to see exactly what your screen will look like, where your timer will be, where the flag button is, it will just feel a little more familiar, take the time to download that and run through it.
I can't speak for how well they checked my books, the receptionist checked to make sure they were on the accepted list, then she took the books to a guy out of my sight and when I arrived at his station he had already taken my books into the exam room and put them on my table, so I have no idea if they even opened them to check for notes. I did have notes, nothing really extensive and as Andrews recommends, I kept them small and neat. They will give you a dry wipe pad and a pen to scribble on.
I did, at the last minute buy a medical dictionary to take with me. I probably should have been using one all along, there were a few questions that the medical dictionary helped me be absolutely sure I had the right answer. Defined a few terms that I was not 100% sure of etc. If you are not feeling super confident, that might make the difference between missing the passing grade by a point or two.
You need to learn about DRG's that is the only thing I was uncomfortable with after graduation and one reason I opted to take the Codemasters exam prep. You need to know discharge statuses, you need to know about APC and the status markers of various APC's (there is almost an entire alphabet of those). Understand how to use the CC and MCC designations in your CM book.
My main focus was finishing the exam, so I worked fairly quickly, if I didn't know it, I didn't know it, mark something and move on. I finished with a little over an hour on the clock. At that point I decided to not only review the flagged questions, but review my entire exam, and take the time to look up in the guidelines anything that I was not 100% sure off. I changed 4 answers from doing that to what I then knew were absolutely correct. Remember the test format is mark the BEST answer, there will be a few that you will think more than one answer could technically be correct, choose the best of those two. Do not allow the medical scenario portion of the test of the stress you out, if you did decently well on the Chisen exercises, you can handle the scenarios presented. That is really all I can think of that I wished I had known going in. If anyone has any specific questions feel free to ask them, I will answer what I can. Good luck to you guys, keep moving forward.
Judy