The Medical Coder program allows students to work at their own pace to prepare students for employment as entry level coding specialists in health care facilities such as hospitals, clinics, physician practice groups, surgery centers, long-term care facilities, and home healthcare agencies. Medical coders are also employed in consulting firms, coding and billing services, insurance companies, governmental agencies, and computer software companies. The medical coder reviews medical documentation provided by physicians and other health care providers and translates this into numerical codes. The coders assign and sequence diagnostic and procedural codes using universally recognized coding systems. Several uses of coded data are for payment of health care claims, statistics, and medical research.