CCA (ASA) study guide
CCA · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Certified Coding Associate (CCA) is AHIMA's entry-level coding credential. It is built for people who are new to the profession: students finishing a coding certificate or associate program, career changers arriving from clinical or administrative roles, and anyone who wants a verifiable baseline before pursuing a specialty credential. The CCA study guide has 6 sections and about 2,125 words.
01Coding Knowledge and Skills
This domain tests ICD-10-CM (diagnoses), ICD-10-PCS (inpatient procedures), CPT (outpatient procedures, E/M, radiology, laboratory, medicine) and HCPCS Level II (drugs, supplies, durable medical equipment). Expect questions on the official guideline hierarchy, the Alphabetic Index–to–Tabular List workflow, and the notations that control code combinations: code first , use additional code , code also , Excludes1 (two codes that may never appear together) and Excludes2 (two codes that may appear together when the conditions are distinct).
302 words, about 2 min02Medical Terminology, Anatomy, and Physiology
Medical terminology questions reward a structural approach: nearly every term is a root (the organ or tissue) plus a prefix (location, number, timing, or degree) plus a suffix (condition, procedure, or process), joined by a combining vowel. Learn high-yield prefixes - hyper- (excess), hypo- (deficient), tachy- (fast), brady- (slow), dys- (difficult or abnormal), poly- (many), intra- (within), inter- (between), sub- (under) - and high-yield suffixes: -itis (inflammation), -ectomy (surgical removal), -otomy (incision into), -ostomy (creating an opening), -plasty (repair), -rrhaphy (suture), -pexy (fixation), -megaly (enlargement), -emia (blood condition), -uria (urine condition), -scopy (visual examination), -gram (record), -graphy (recording process).
586 words, about 3 min03Health Record Content and Documentation
This domain covers what a complete record contains and how documentation must be authored. Know the components of a history and physical (chief complaint, history of present illness, review of systems, past medical/surgical/social/family history, physical examination, and medical decision making), the hospital discharge summary, operative report, pathology and radiology reports, nursing notes, progress notes, consultation reports, and advance directives.
317 words, about 2 min04Compliance and Regulatory Guidelines
Compliance questions blend privacy law, fraud-and-abuse law, and accreditation. For HIPAA, know the Privacy Rule (uses and disclosures for treatment, payment, and health care operations; the minimum necessary standard; the elements of a valid authorization; patient rights to access and amend; accounting of disclosures), the Security Rule safeguards (administrative, physical, technical), and breach notification timelines.
300 words, about 2 min05Reimbursement Methodologies
Reimbursement questions test how payment models differ. Under inpatient prospective payment (IPPS) , a Medicare claim is grouped into an MS-DRG by principal diagnosis, secondary diagnoses (CC/MCC), procedures, age, sex, and discharge disposition; payment equals the DRG relative weight multiplied by the hospital’s adjusted base rate.
295 words, about 1 min06Information Technology
Health information technology questions cover the systems a coder touches and the controls that protect them. Know the functions of the electronic health record, the master patient index (the MPI is the identity backbone - duplicates and overlays cause merged records and misattributed data), the encoder and grouper, computer-assisted coding and natural language processing, clinical documentation improvement tools, registries, and interfaces that exchange data using standards such as HL7.
325 words, about 2 min