We are excited to present the BSAS Academy Billing and Coding Course. When starting on a trip, you are more likely to get where you want to go when you have a destination in mind. In this course you learn about your ultimate destination: the coding profession. By understanding what coding is, the nature of patient encounters, professional certification, and potential career opportunities, you will formulate ideas on your career goals and the steps needed to reach them. Many jobs in the healthcare field work with codes even though they may not have a job title of coder. For example, medical assistants, billers, schedulers, and medical secretaries may use codes as part of their jobs. This text uses the term coder to refer to those who assigns, reads, or uses codes as part of job responsibilities. A wide variety of healthcare professionals, in addition to medical doctors (MDs), provides patient services and uses codes to bill for their services. For example, dentists (DDSs or DMDs), osteopaths (DOs), chiropractors (DCs), and nurse practitioners (NPs) also bill their services with the same codes as physicians. This text uses the terms physician and provider interchangeably to refer to any healthcare professional who provides services that are billed with codes.