Oakton’s Health Information Technology program offers several curricula in academic and technological studies designed to provide students with marketable skills within the health care industry. The program offers opportunities to combine disciplines of medicine, computer technology and information management. In addition to an A.A.S. degree, the program offers a certificate in Medical Coding and Billing. The full-time degree program is offered in a hybrid format online and on the Des Plaines campus. The part-time degree program and Medical Coding and Billing certificate are offered fully online.
Employment opportunities for individuals skilled in health information technologies exist in hospitals, ambulatory care, long-term care, managed care and physician practices, as well as non-traditional areas such as consulting, legal offices, industry vendors, insurance companies and pharmaceutical firms.
Admission is limited for the A.A.S. degree and Medical Coding and Billing Certificate. For additional information, contact a health career specialist. Those admitted to the program will be required to submit proof of medical insurance coverage. Students must receive a minimum grade of C in all HIT, BIO and MAT courses.
Health Career curricula are governed by specific objectives, rules and regulations formulated by the College, accrediting bodies and participating clinical facilities. Students should familiarize themselves with these standards. Students should also be aware that failure to maintain satisfactory progress in technical courses may significantly delay completion of the curriculum or may result in the student being dropped from the curriculum. Each student’s right to participation in the clinical portion of the curriculum is also contingent upon compliance with the rules of the clinical facility. The clinical facility has sole discretion to determine when its rules have been violated.
Clinical placements require a health assessment, certain immunizations, yearly vaccines, substance abuse testing, criminal background check, specific skill certification (i.e., CPR/BLS) and health insurance. The requirements represent an additional cost to the student.
All Oakton College Health Career students in a program with a clinical component must have “clear” criminal background checks and drug screens in order to participate in any and all clinical components of any health career program courses.
To comply with state statutes and clinical affiliation agreements, and to provide a safe environment for students, employees, and patients cared for by students, those accepted into Oakton’s health career programs will be required to complete a criminal background check and drug screening through a company contracted by the College. Health Career students will be charged a fee for this service.
Timelines for completing criminal background checks and drug screens may vary among the various programs. Deadline dates for each program will be provided by the individual department chairs at the time of a student’s acceptance into a health career program.
Students without a clear criminal background check and/or clear drug screen will not be allowed to enroll in clinical practicum courses or attend clinical programs. This would further necessitate that the student withdraws from the health career program at that time.
Students who refuse a criminal background check and/or drug screen will not be considered “clear” and will not be authorized to participate in the clinical component of the health career program, necessitating withdrawal from the program at that time. Individual results of student background checks and drug screens are considered confidential.
Determination of whether or not a student can participate in the clinical component of a particular health career program will be communicated to the respective department chairs by the Background Check/Drug Screen vendor. Students may view their personal results on the vendor’s website.
Oakton’s Health Information Technology program follows the American Health Information Management Association’s (AHIMA) curriculum and is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education (CAHIIM) which is the accrediting organization for the degree-granting programs in health informatics and information management. AHIMA’s mission is followed by the Health Information Technology program.
CAHIIM DOMAINS AND SUBDOMAINS (Learning Outcomes per CAHIM)
I. Data Content, Structure, & Standards
- Classification Systems
- Health Record Content and Documentation
- Data Governance
- Data Management
- Secondary Data Sources
II. Information Protection: Access, Disclosure, Archival, Privacy, & Security
- Health Law
- Data Privacy, Confidentiality, and Security
- Release of Information
III. Informatics, Analytics and Data Use
- Health Information Technologies
- Information Management Strategic Planning
- Analytics and Decision Support
- Health Care Statistics
- Research Methods
- Consumer Informatics
- Health Information Exchange
- Information Integrity and Data Quality
IV. Revenue Management
- Revenue Cycle and Reimbursement
V. Compliance
- Regulatory
- Coding
- Fraud Surveillance
- Clinical Documentation Improvement
VI. Leadership
- Leadership roles
- Change Management
- Work Design & Process Improvement
- Human Resources Management
- Raining and Development
- Strategic and Organizational Management
- Financial Management
- Ethics
- Project Management
- Vendor/Contract Management
- Enterprise Information Management
Health Information Technology Courses
Course offers brief overview of medical terminology suitable for developing basic vocabulary. Content includes deciphering, building and understanding medical terms by studying their parts. (Course does not substitute for HIT 104.)
Course presents medical terminology through study of medical word roots, prefixes and suffixes. Focus on relationships among symptomatic, disease, and procedural terms.
Course offers comprehensive coverage of pharmacology as it relates to clinical documentation in the health record. Content includes medical terminology, drug classifications, therapeutic use in diseases and conditions, adverse effects and side effects.
Course provides an introduction to cancer registry organization and management. Emphasis is placed on the basic knowledge of the types and purpose of cancer registries, quality control activities, accreditation, standard-setting organizations, as well as the legal and ethical issues surrounding a cancer registry.
Course covers the international classification system required to organize medical information for retrieval and reporting. Focus is on both the disease classification system and the procedure classification system. Work focuses on acquiring skills in coding diseases and procedures and abstracting medical data. Hands-on experience in coding inpatient and outpatient records.
Fee: $25
Course provides an in-depth picture of the systematic processes used in the daily operations of a cancer registry. These processes include identification of cases, coding, maintaining quality, as well as lifetime follow-up and the role these elements plays in providing data for analysis. The focus will be on case eligibility requirements for state and national standards as well as the voluntary standards for accredited cancer programs of the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (ACOS/CoC). The importance of cancer committees, cancer conferences and quality monitoring will be reviewed.
Course teaches students how to use the ICD-10-CM coding system to assign diagnostic codes to patient-physician encounters. Work focuses on acquiring skills in coding diseases and conditions. After learning the basic steps in code selection, the class concentrates on applying this skill to the physician practice setting.
Course presents anatomy and physiology through an anatomic overview and basic knowledge of body organs, body systems and disease pathology for coding within the ICD-10-CM coding system.
Course provides in-depth study of Medicare insurance system. Focus is on knowledge of terminology and guidelines involved in claim filing process. Topics also include understanding of Medicare reimbursement policies, appeal rights, and CMS’s current efforts to curtail healthcare fraud and abuse.
Fee: $10
Introductory course gives instruction in health records and insurance processing procedures in the medical office. Focus is on correlating health information with billing procedures.
Fee: $10
Course presents in-depth study of the Evaluation and Management section of CPT coding system. Based on knowledge of key definitions required in Evaluation and Management coding. Focus on auditing documentation and validating code selection. Includes discussion of categories of service, modifier usage, and payment methodologies.
Fee: $10
Course examines health information management profession, healthcare delivery systems, health information functions, purpose, and users, health record content and documentation, data management, secondary data sources, overview of legal issues in health information management, data privacy and confidentiality and healthcare statistics.
Fee: $30
Course defines cancer and how it develops and spreads. Students will learn about the many types of cancer and how to classify these tumors utilizing globally recognized codes. Instruction on the different references which are used to assign codes for topography, morphology and extent of disease will be explored. Two major staging systems will be examined, The American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) TNM Stage and Collaborative Stage. An overview of historical staging systems will be included as a reference for students.
Fee: $10
Course provides introduction to medical science. Content includes study of nature and cause of disease, patient screening, diagnostic methods, treatment, and management of patients, as well as prognosis and prevention along with practical application of knowledge by health information management professional.
Course concentrates on mastery of guidelines and requirements for efficient and compliant healthcare claims filing. Content includes advanced coding scenarios that incorporate proper diagnosis and procedure code selection, correct modifier usage, appropriate HCPCS code utilization, surgical package billing concepts, and accurate analysis of claims. Current issues and new guidelines also incorporated.
Fee: $10
Course covers oncology treatment and coding including an overview of nomenclature and classification systems. Importance is placed on major sites of cancer, diagnostic and staging procedures, treatment modalities, clinical trials and research protocols. American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging, SEER summary staging, and extent of disease concepts used by physicians and cancer surveillance organizations to determine treatment and survival will be emphasized.
Fee: $10
Course surveys sources and uses of health data in the United States. Content includes collection of data, commonly used computations in healthcare, and the presentation and reporting of data. Function and use of registries with emphasis on Tumor Registry studied.
Course is designed to introduce and apply the principles of cancer registry abstracting. Identification and selection of appropriate clinical information from medical records in a manner consistent with cancer registration regulatory core data requirements will be emphasized. Upon completion, student should be able to record, code, and stage site-specific cancer information as well as perform quality control edits to abstracted information to assure timeliness, completeness and accuracy of data.
Fee: $20
Course introduces cancer patient follow-up methodology and processes used to obtain follow-up cancer information regarding disease status, recurrence information, subsequent treatment and development of subsequent primary cancers. The use of follow-up information within the cancer registry and healthcare organization is also reviewed. An introduction to cancer statistics with an emphasis placed on descriptive and analytic epidemiology, cancer surveillance, annual report preparation, and usefulness of statistical cancer data in a healthcare organization will be reviewed. Upon completion, students should be able to demonstrate an understanding of physician and other follow-up resources and activities.
Fee: $20
Course covers basic principles and guidelines of CPT coding in both hospital-based and ambulatory care environments. Students develop skills in using CPT to report reimbursable services.
Fee: $25
Course covers health information systems used in health care delivery systems including terminology and essential concepts of health information systems. An overview of administrative and clinical information systems is given. Course covers phases of system development life cycle and structure of electronic health record (EHR). Content includes overview of health care industry’s transitioning to electronic health record systems, components of EHR, certified EHR technology, benefits of EHR, along with privacy and security issues affecting access to and use of patient information. Students are introduced to data analytics and healthcare informatics. Course also covers database design, standards for HIT, and health information exchange. Students practice with software applications common to a healthcare setting.
Course provides supervised hands-on clinical experience in all aspects of cancer registry organization and operation. Experience will include but not be limited to all facets of coding and abstracting of cancer data, data collection, follow-up processes, and quality assurance activities. Students will have exposure to cancer committee functions as well as cancer conferences. Upon completion, students should be able to apply cancer information management theory to cancer registry practices and standards. Students have the status of learner and shall not be considered agency employees, nor do they replace employed staff. Clinical practice is conducted as a non-paid laboratory experience under the direct supervision of a cancer tumor registrar and will include experiences in all eight National Cancer Registrars Association (NCRA) educational components.
Fee: $20
Course focuses on quality improvement and assessment in variety of healthcare settings. Content includes implementation of quality tools and techniques as related to health information department activities of acute care hospitals, long term care facilities, behavioral health settings, hospital outpatient and emergency departments, and ambulatory care settings, and quality issues related to medical staff activities.
Fee: $15
Course provides comprehensive study of the concepts of healthcare supervision and management and the fundamentals of law for health information management. Content includes the functions of management: planning, organizing, staffing, influencing, and controlling. Legal topics include: law and ethics, legal proceedings, tort law, legal health record: maintenance, content, documentation, and disposition, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules, access, use and disclosure and release of health information, and required reporting and mandatory disclosure laws.
Fee: $15
Course examines complex areas of International Classification of Disease (ICD) and Current Procedural Coding (CPT) utilizing patient records from a wide variety of healthcare settings. Makes extensive use of encoder software and electronic coding references. Explores coding quality and compliance, regulatory issues, and revenue cycle considerations.
Course contains health information Professional Practice Experience (PPE) in a variety of healthcare facilities and other health information related organizations. Opportunity to gain knowledge and skill in health information and health information-related functions such as: healthcare regulatory, billing and reimbursement, and utilization of related software.
Fee: $20
Course provides comprehensive study of healthcare reimbursement methodologies, commercial health insurance plans, government-sponsored healthcare programs and managed care plans. Focus is on Medicare-Medicaid prospective payment systems for inpatients and post-acute care patients and other systems for ambulatory patients. Emphasis is on role of clinical coding and coding compliance, revenue cycle management and value-based purchasing.
Fee: $25
Course focuses on new issues in fast changing health information management environment. Topics covered each semester will vary based on current issues and perceived student need. Course may be repeated three times as long as specific topic is different. Fee Varies. Prerequisite may vary by topic.