CPC exam in 3 weeks — still shaky on E/M coding, any last-minute advice?
Taking the CPC in 3 weeks and I'm feeling decent about most sections but E/M coding is still tripping me up. I keep second-guessing myself between 99213 and 99214 on office visit questions. I've done about 600 practice questions over 8 weeks and I'm consistently scoring 72-74% on full practice exams, which I know is close to passing but not comfortable yet.
My main issue with E/M is that I don't always know which documentation elements to weight more heavily when the clinical scenario is ambiguous. I understand the 2021 guidelines in theory but applying them under time pressure is different. The 5-hour 40-minute limit isn't the problem — I'm usually finishing with 45 minutes left — it's accuracy that's holding me down.
I've been tabbing my code books pretty thoroughly but I'm wondering if I've been relying on them too much for things I should have memorized. Surgery guidelines and global package rules are areas where I look something up every single question rather than just knowing the logic. Is there a point where you stop referencing and just drill the concepts?
Planning to do 50 questions a day for the next 18 days and focus on E/M, Surgery, and Radiology specifically. If anyone recently passed and wants to share what their practice scores looked like vs. the actual exam, that would help a lot for calibrating my confidence going in.
For E/M under the 2021 guidelines, medical decision making is the key driver for most encounters. Make yourself a one-page reference of the MDM table with complexity levels and what counts toward each element. That's what finally made it click for me after weeks of confusion.
I passed at 76% on the actual exam after scoring 71-73% on practice tests consistently. The real exam felt harder on the coding scenarios but easier on the guidelines questions than most question banks. Your trajectory sounds solid — just keep the daily volume up through exam day.
72-74% practice scores are typically a good sign for passing. Most people I know who passed were in that range in the final 2 weeks. The ones who failed were usually under 65% going in. Keep your momentum and don't try to cram new content the night before.
Surgery global package rules are worth memorizing the basics — 0/10/90 day globals and what's included vs. separately billable. It shows up enough that looking it up every time eats into your accuracy on the actual reasoning part of the question.
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