Health Information Manager

What the wage survey shows

The national median is $123,860 a year, and the bottom tenth sit near $73,390. Take this one with care. The federal survey has no health information manager line, so the job is counted inside medical and health services managers, a group that also holds hospital chief executives and nursing home administrators. Those people pull the median up. A first health information management job pays nearer the bottom of this range than the middle.

Your first job in the department

These entry roles sit in a lower-paid survey group entirely, which is part of why the headline median looks so generous. You get to the manager numbers by running a team, not by running a queue.

The top tenth

The money in this field concentrates around two things: privacy and revenue. Someone has to be accountable when patient records leak, and someone has to make sure the coding that bills a hospital's work is defensible. Both are senior, both are well paid.

What it costs to get there

Two-year associate degree in health information technology

Often under $5,000 a year at a community college in-state

Four-year bachelor's degree in health information management, in-state public

Roughly $11,000 to $15,000 a year in tuition and fees

The national exam for the senior credential

$229 for members of the professional association, $299 otherwise

Renewal and continuing education

An annual membership and a set number of education hours every two years

Roughly, all in

$10,000 to $61,000

Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel

The low end is a two year associate degree in health information technology at a community college, often under $5,000 a year in state, plus $229 to $299 for the national credential exam. The high end is a four year bachelor's degree in health information management at an in state public university at $11,000 to $15,000 a year, plus the senior credential exam. Keeping the credential costs an annual membership and a set number of continuing education hours every two years. This field has more accredited online programs than almost any other health career, so working in a records department while finishing the degree that promotes you is normal.

File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). One quirk worth knowing: this field has more accredited online degree programs than almost any health career, so you can often work in a records department while you finish the degree that promotes you.

Benefits and the shape of the work

• Hospital benefits

  Health insurance, retirement match, paid leave. Nonprofit hospitals also open the door to Public Service Loan Forgiveness on federal student loans.

• Remote and hybrid work

  Unusually common for a health career. Coding and auditing in particular are often done entirely from home.

• No nights, no weekends, no patients bleeding on you

  It is a health career on an office schedule.

• Employer-paid certification

  Many hospitals cover exam fees and dues, because credentialed staff matter in audits and accreditation.

The path

The credential is the gate, and only accredited programs let you sit for it.

1. 1

   High school

   Grades 11 and 12

   Biology for the medical vocabulary, English for the writing, and any computer or database course you can get.

2. 2

   Accredited degree

   2 to 4 years

   A two-year associate or a four-year bachelor's degree in health information management. It must be accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education, or you cannot sit the national exam.

3. 3

   Professional practice experience

   During the degree

   Built into accredited programs: supervised time inside a real records department, learning the systems.

4. 4

   Pass the national exam

   Weeks after graduating

   The Registered Health Information Administrator exam for bachelor's graduates, or the technician-level exam for associate graduates. The administrator exam is 150 questions in three and a half hours.

5. 5

   Move up

   5 to 10 years

   Technician, then supervisor, then manager or director. Privacy officer and compliance roles branch off the same track.

High school courses that help

• Biology and anatomy

  You will not treat patients, but you have to understand what a chart is saying.

• Computer science or databases

  This is a data job wearing hospital clothes.

• English

  Policies, audit findings and training material are all writing.

• Business or law

  Privacy rules, contracts and compliance run through the whole career.

Time and money, at a glance

Years after high school

2 to 4

Admission

Ordinary grades. Accreditation of the program matters far more than its prestige

Total tuition

$10,000 for a community college associate degree, $45,000 or more for four years in-state

Paid while training?

No, though many students work in records departments while studying online

Not licensed, but the credential is everything

No state licenses this job. What gates it is certification from the American Health Information Management Association, and that association only lets you sit its exam if your degree came from a program accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education. That accreditor currently covers about 350 programs across 49 states and roughly 25,500 students. Check the accreditation before you enroll anywhere. A health informatics degree, confusingly, does not qualify you for the administrator exam. It has to be health information management.

Specialties that raise your pay

• Privacy and security

  Becoming the person accountable for patient privacy under federal health privacy law. A named role at every hospital.

• Coding audit

  Checking that the codes billed match what the record actually documents. Directly tied to a hospital's revenue, and paid accordingly.

• Cancer registry

  A separate credential and a separate career, tracking cancer cases and outcomes for state and national registries.

• Health data analytics

  Moving from managing the record to analyzing what is in it. Learn a query language and a reporting tool.

Nice-to-haves

• A hospital job of any kind

  Registration desk, transport, unit clerk. Knowing how a hospital actually behaves is worth a semester.

• Medical terminology

  Often a single cheap community college course, and it makes everything afterwards easier.

• Query skills

  Being the person who can pull the number nobody else can pull changes how a department sees you.

• Calm under audit

  A big part of this job is being asked to prove something, in writing, under a deadline.

A typical day

Start with the queues: records waiting to be completed by doctors, requests from patients and lawyers for copies of a chart, coding work sitting unbilled. Then the exceptions. A chart with two patients' notes merged into it. A request for records that you are not allowed to release. A coder and a physician disagreeing about what was documented. Meetings about the next change to the electronic record system, where your job is to say what it will break. Somewhere in there, an audit wants three years of access logs by Friday.

The honest trade-offs

Work life

Typical hours

40 a week, more around audits and system changes

Remote work

Common, and full-time remote in coding and auditing roles

Physical demand

Low

Unionized

Sometimes, in larger public hospital systems

Similar paths

• Medical Records SpecialistTurn what happened to a patient into codes and clean records. Office work, health pay, and no bedside.
• Business AnalystWork out what a company actually needs, then write it down clearly enough to build.
• Project ManagerKeep a big piece of work on schedule and on budget, across a team that does not report to you.

The exam has a hard gate in front of it

You cannot simply study and sit the Registered Health Information Administrator exam. Your degree has to come from a program accredited by the national accreditor for this field. Pick an unaccredited program and the credential is closed to you no matter how good your grades were.

Blocking someone's own records is illegal

Federal rules on information blocking mean a hospital or a software vendor can be penalized for getting in the way of patients and providers accessing health data. Health information managers are the people who have to make that work in practice, on systems built long before the rule existed.

Two patients, one chart

Big hospital systems hold duplicate and overlapping records for the same person, and sometimes merge two different people into one file. Finding and untangling those is a standing job in this field, and getting it wrong means someone is treated using another person's history.

It is a health job you can do from your kitchen

Medical coding and record auditing were among the first hospital jobs to go fully remote, and many stayed that way. It is one of the few careers that gives you a hospital paycheck without ever walking onto a ward.