CPC Medical Terminology Study Course

Your CPC Study Plan

This course distills the Medical Terminology for Healthcare Professions OER textbook (Nelson & Greene, UWF) into an interactive study tool mapped to the AAPC Certified Professional Coder exam.

The CPC exam tests your ability to translate physician documentation into accurate CPT, ICD-10-CM, and HCPCS codes. Medical terminology and anatomy are the foundation of every section — from surgical coding to E&M to pathology. If you can't read the record, you can't code it.

How to Use This

Chapters — Study each body system with key terms, word parts, and CPC relevance tags. Flashcards — Drill prefixes, suffixes, combining forms, and full terms. Filter by category or system. Quiz — Test yourself with multiple-choice questions across all chapters. Reference — Quick-look tables for word building rules, prefixes, and suffixes.

CPC Exam Quick Facts

Format: 150 multiple-choice questions, open-book, 5 hours 40 minutes

Passing: 70% or higher (105+ correct)

Open Book: CPT manual, ICD-10-CM, and HCPCS Level II code books allowed — physical books only, no digital

Exam Sections: Surgery (by body system), E&M, Anesthesia, Radiology, Pathology & Lab, Medicine, ICD-10-CM, HCPCS Level II

Key Difference from CPB: CPC is coding-focused — you are assigning codes from documentation, not managing the billing lifecycle. Terminology and anatomy accuracy directly determines your score.

5 Word Building Rules

Rule 1: When combining two combining forms, keep the combining form vowel. Gastr/o + enter/o = gastroentero-

Rule 2: Combining form + suffix starting with a consonant — keep the vowel. enter/o + -logy = enterology

Rule 3: Combining form + suffix starting with a vowel — drop the vowel. ven/o + -ous = venous

Rule 4: Prefixes go at the beginning — no combining vowel used.

Rule 5: When defining a term, start with the suffix, then work left to right. Intra/ven/ous = pertaining to (-ous) within (intra-) a vein (ven/o)

Source: Medical Terminology for Healthcare Professions by Andrea Nelson & Katherine Greene, UWF Pressbooks. CC BY 4.0.

Study by Chapter

Tap a chapter to study key terms and concepts. CPC exam relevance is color-coded — HIGH means this body system appears heavily in CPT surgical sections and ICD-10-CM coding.

Flashcard Drill

Tap the card to flip. Filter by category below. Swipe left/right on mobile.

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Test Your Knowledge

Choose a quiz mode below. Each mode targets a different section of the CPC exam.

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Full Review

20 questions, all topics

🔤

Prefixes

10 questions

🔡

Suffixes

10 questions

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Body Systems

15 questions

Quick Reference

Common Prefixes

Prefix	Meaning	Example

Common Suffixes

Suffix	Meaning	Example

Body Part Combining Forms

Form	Meaning	Example

Color Prefixes

Prefix	Meaning	Example
Chlor/o-	Green	Chlorophyll
Chrom-	Color	Chromosome
Cyano-	Blue	Cyanosis
Erythr/o-	Red	Erythrocyte
Leuk/o-	White	Leukocyte
Melan/o-	Black	Melanin