Laurie Keck
Laurie Keck-McGee was born and raised in Southern California where she and her family with three siblings shared a love of cooking, movies, and travel; her travel have taken her across the globe to Scotland, England, Whales, France, Japan and Australia. In her twenties, Laurie went to West Los Angeles Community College to explore many types of classes to explore career options. She found herself enjoying the rigors of the business world thanks to the influence of her father whom is an accountant. But, she was also drawn to medicine from a biology teacher at Venice High School that she enjoyed so much that it encouraged her to take college biology as a prerequisite for her business degree and she was hooked! The instructor was so electrifying and exciting that she never missed a day of class. The experience was so positive that she took every science course as extra credit including anatomy, microbiology, chemistry, and science math.
After graduating from West Los Angeles Community College, Laurie was accepted to the University of California, Riverside to further her studies in one of the two colleges in California that focus on a science degree in Business of Administration. After completing two years, Laurie returned to Los Angeles to find that she wanted to go into a career that blended her business knowledge of accounting, financial management, human resources, and strategic management within the medical field. Choices of positions were limited since she did not know enough about medical insurance, medical billing and coding thus, she made a decision to return to school at Everest College to learn billing and coding and found her passion!! The experience was amazing! She was valedictorian of her class.
She was immediately employed after graduating, at Downtown Physician Medical Group in Downtown LA and she became an ambassador for her patients and a strong representative for her doctors. Patients on the whole did not understand all the details of their benefits so she became their advocate to help them get their coverage and care they needed as best as she could. She spent one day on the phone for over 7 hours to fight with a worker’s compensation case to fight for a man who needed a surgery for over 5 years that had been denied; best moment was calling him and giving him the good news that he no longer needed to suffer. She also enjoyed working with her doctor’s side by side being a support to help them get optimum reimbursement for the work that they performed as well as keeping them informed on new changes in laws and regulations to prevent denials. The field was electrifying and enjoyed doing something new every day, until one day an opportunity came along for a medical and billing instructor and jumped at the chance with the support of her mother; who is also a tenured teacher of over 20 years. Laurie’s knowledge of the field and her experiences came alive in the classroom and has been helping individuals like herself many years ago make this amazing change. She motivates, encourages and breaks down material to help students achieve their success in their upcoming field. She has been honored as teacher of the year for Parthenon and has worked with charities to help the community as well.
Since then, she has received her CPC (Certified Professional Coder) certification from the AAPC (American Academy of Professional Coders) in 2011 and is looking forward to achieving more certifications to challenge her beyond the classroom.
The love of her family and, husband, John and daughter, Jillian are her greatest joy and greatest gift.
