Careers in Health Information Technology

I am hoping to find someone on here who is working in the Health Information technology industry. I am interested in going to school for a associates degree in this field but I have a few questions. Is it hard to find jobs? What is the average entry level salary? Are online schools as good as community college? I will appreciate any information that I am able to get.

 

It really depends on where you are and what you want to do. If your desire is to work in medical records or billing and coding then an associate degree in HIT (and associated certifications, RHIT, CPC, CCS, etc.) will probably work for you. If you desire to work in clinical information systems building and support then I would shoot for a bare minimum of an associate degree in CIS / IT / CS or a medical discipline (nursing / rad tech / etc.) and then try to get a job in a hospital. For medical records / billing and coding entry level jobs tend to start off at ~30-40k. For clinical information systems jobs, ~50-55k. I earned my degrees online and a number of coworkers have also earned degrees from known online schools (such as Kaplan and UOP) and they haven't been hindered by them. Good luck.

 

Hi Kris10jones,

I'd like to echo everything dlcurious said. I work in Information Technology at a Hospital the term HIT can mean many things, as dlcurious points out. I do traditional IT type work on Windows and UNIX servers and more specific things related to healthcare with our Electronic Health Record system and security in order to comply with our various regulations. HIT may also refer to Medical Records, Billing, and Coding. It may also refer to an area called biomedical engineering which involves working on devices such as heart monitors, IV pumps, and so on from a hardware standpoint. Which of these areas are you interested in?