We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jasmine Pickett, BHA, CPC, CRC, CPMA, CPC-I a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jasmine, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

I always knew that I wanted to work in the healthcare industry but growing up working in healthcare meant either being a doctor or a nurse in my eyes. After graduating high school in 2003, I immediately enrolled into nursing school. Now at the time I was deathly afraid of needles. But I told myself that if I just pushed through it that I would be okay. I spent the next year of college doing all of the basic English and Math classes that you have to take. Year two rolls around and clinicals start i.e., learning to prick and be pricked with needles to learn how to draw blood etc. Well, that didn’t work out too well needless to say. I couldn’t bring myself to prick or be pricked and I quit nursing school right after that. I knew that it wasn’t for me. So here I was basically a college drop out trying to figure out “now what.” I remember seeing a commercial late one night that said, “have you ever thought about a career in medical billing and coding?” And the light bulb went off! I had that aha moment. So, the next day I enrolled into the medical billing and coding program at Sanford Brown College here in Atlanta. The program was 13 months long, so I was working my job at Honda Finance from 9-6 Monday-Friday and attending school on Saturdays and Sunday from 8-4. I did this for 13 months. Midway through the program I became pregnant with my first son. I wobbled into class every weekend and was able to complete the program three days before he was born. I was 22 at the time. Once my son turned six weeks old, I had to do an unpaid externship as apart of completing the overall program. I started at a doctor’s office answering phones, scheduling patients, verifying insurance. I eventually worked my way up office manager and then to the billing manager. During this time, I ended up having my second son and enrolled back into college to obtain my bachelor’s degree. I eventually left that doctors office to peruse other opportunities that were more medical coding related vs medical billing. People tend to think that billing and coding are the same things, and while they can and do intertwine, they are distinctly different.
A few years had gone by, and I was working in corporate at a hospital here in Atlanta that will remain nameless, and I had had enough of the office politics. By this time, I was engaged to be married and pregnant with my third son. Once I went on maternity from the hospital that will remain nameless, I vowed that I wasn’t going back! In every position I had held I always found myself being the trainer or the “Goto” person so while on maternity leave, I said to myself “I can do this!” And that is literally how iCode Healthcare Solutions was born. So, I started to shop my services. After a few months of no luck a company contacted me looking for help on a project that was medical coding related. They were an IT firm and didn’t know much about medical coding and had found me. I accepted the opportunity and began to consult for them. While consulting I notice they had hired other consultants that didn’t know what they were doing, so as per usual I somehow became the trainer. But my dreams were bigger than that.
By this time the baby had been born, and my husband and I had gotten married. I remember distinctly talking to him one night telling him that I could hire the coders myself and could take over the project. He said to me “why don’t we put to together a proposal; all they can say is no.” So, we did just that! We spent a few weeks working on it, asked for a meeting, presented the Information with potential cost savings to them and they actually said yes! Here we were doing work for the largest health care organization in Michigan, Henry Ford Health Systems. After working for several high-profile health care organizations, we then began to realize that there was a significant shortage of skilled medical coders.
We decided to birth iCode Academy which is a licensed non-profit trade school which successfully trains people to become certified professional coders. We offer a 24-week training program that prepares the students to sit for the national coding exam. We offer online externships that provides them with real world experience as well as we assist with job placement with our sister company iCode Health. iCode Academy has partnered with a program called WIOA and that programs gives grants to students who are looking to go back to school. iCode Academy is a licensed and approved training provider for both the State of Georgia, Alabama, and Michigan. Our training is remote, so we are able to train students from anywhere. Medical coders typically work from home and average about 50-60k annually.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

iCode Academy is an organization that champions and focus on quality, and is an expert in empowered workforce, capable of achieving sustainable excellence. The iCode Academy’s Mission. To positively impact economic development, employment opportunities, and overall community sustainability through education, technology advancements, and training. iCode Academy intends to directly impact the coding career crisis as well as the community at large providing viable employment opportunities while integrating the face of coders through diversity, as well as the landscape of the minority families and their livelihood. The iCode Academy’s Vision. iCode Academy is dedicated to providing comprehensive coding training services on all ends of the coding healthcare-solution spectrum. As leaders in the industry, we position ourselves as an expert resource by making it our responsibility to continually contribute educational opportunities to students, clients, and healthcare professionals.
iCode Academy medical coding training courses teach the fundamentals of medical coding, prepares the student for certification, and helps them establish a career in the medical coding industry. Get your medical coding training, exam preparation, exams, and continuing education all from a source you trust – one of the fastest growing medical coding organizations in the world.
The iCode Mission. To ensure clients’ peace of mind by providing high-volume, cost-effective revenue cycle coding at a 98% accuracy rate and unmatched customer service through heightened technology and methods driven by an experienced team.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Error number 1 – When starting out I did not understand how to differentiate a partner from a predator. I was very naïve and thought everyone who showed iCode interest was a “friend.” I found out very quickly that everyone is not your friend and people will prey on you not having much business acumen. In that, I learned a further lesson of not telling anyone your ideas before you go live with them. In the past, I have been excited to talk about my ideas to whoever would listen, only to see my ideas be implemented by someone else. From those moments I learned to trademark everything that I do before bringing it forward.

Error number 2 – Not understanding how to cultivate relationships. Your net worth is determined by your network. Because of error number 1, I became closed off to people in general for some time. I began to feel like everyone did not want to see me win and that just was not the case. Most of my biggest supporters and champions over the years have been people that I did not know.

Error number 3 – Thinking I could do it all. I literally thought I could do it all in the beginning. I was my own website developer, content creator, accountant, etc., trying to do it all will have you stretched thin and not truly focused on your craft. Focus on what you are good at and over time create a budget for a subject matter expert lawyers, accountants, and social media. Having these people in place will allow you to flourish because you can put that energy back into your business, where it should be.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

Transparency, and passion. I am real about who I am, where I come from, my struggles, and my success. I am extremely passionate about helping other people in my community learn a skill/trade that they might not have known existed otherwise. So often in the African American community we get segmented into certain jobs, not knowing how much there is out there. Medical coding can turn into auditing and run into compliance. The world of medical coding is multifaceted, and the possibilities are endless. I truly take pride in showing other people what opportunities are out there in this industry if they just give it their all. I am a walking example that it can be done no matter what obstacles are thrown at you. In 2020, I was one of the award recipients for the Atlanta Black 40 Under 40. A true honor that I will always cherish.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.icodeacademy.org
• Instagram: iCode_Academy
• Facebook: ICodeAcademyATL
• Linkedin: (99+) Jasmine Pickett, BHA, CPC, CRC, CPMA, CPC-I | LinkedIn
• Youtube: iCode Academy

Image Credits
Rious Photography, LLC