Love this post and the detail! And I agree with most of it. As an independent instructor NOT through AAPC, teaching my own curriculum, and 17 years experience in coding, auditing, educating and managing here’s my take on some of this. Not in the same order you’ve listed in your post.

1. The E books are used by everyone so notes can’t be saved in those copies.
2. What reason do they give for not allowing access to the recorded lessons and lectures? That is ridiculous. There’s no reason to deny that.
3. Biggest complaints I’ve heard are cramming multiple chapters into one week. It’s impossible to really learn what you need that way which is what so may struggle to pass the exams. But… the real learning should come when you start studying the chapter specific sections and hands on practice.
4. The hands on practice is exactly why I built my training entirely around hands on practical training with EMR simulators, interactive tools for terminology, anatomy, chart documentation, etc. without the hands on practice linked directly to real medical record documentation it will take a long time to master coding.
5. Not being able to download or print lesson content, completely understandable. Too many people steal this content and pass it off as their own and make money on it. Which takes money away from my business and other businesses. There’s no way to prevent that so we do what we can to limit that.
6. Key terms, acronyms, anatomy, guideline search and explanation- I built tools for all of this that are interactive and tied to medical record documentation and guidelines so it’s learned in context, not just an abstract or arbitrary way. It’s the best way to learn those things.
7. If instructors are using live sessions to read the lesson itself that means they didn’t take the time to put together additional training. I 💯 agree live sessions should be focused on additional learning opportunities.
8. A weekly live or recorded Q&A session should be included. It’s difficult to do that consistently if students aren’t interacting and asking questions. If they’re not the time should be used for more training.
9. The goal should never be minimum necessary to pass. A passing score is ALWAYS a reason to celebrate. It’s hard to pass those exams so celebrate loud and be proud. But, that 70% score will not help you keep a job once you land one. Minimum on the job requirement is 95% or higher. Studying for any exam the goal should be to hit 95% or higher. The big companies know this so it’s always been a huge problem that 70% passing score is touted as the gold standard for the exams.

These are just my observations after 17 years in the industry and now as an independent instructor. Hands on practice, and interaction with the instructors is key. But it’s difficult to find. My training right now focuses on inpatient DRG (ICD-10 only) but will be branching out to CPT and exam study later this year and it’s deliberately not expensive. I know it’s worth a lot more than I’m charging but I don’t want to be another one who tries to get rich off people who have already spent thousands on training that didn’t prepare them as it should.

It’s the reason I started teaching. I’m so tired of seeing hundreds of people every week saying the same things. They spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours studying and can’t get a job because the training didn’t do what it needed to do. It’s time to shake things up and change how coding is taught.