A Medical Coding Salary can be a more than satisfactory reward for carrying out an essential job and many people looking to choose medical coding as a career seek to find out what exactly they could earn in this profession before committing themselves.
Here’s an answer: Salary.com show in their statistics that the middle range of medical coding professionals (50% of all surveyed) earn between $38,058 & $49,906 each year. The top 10% currently earn $55,490 or more. Without doubt the medical coding salary that can be earned is a big attraction to those wishing to enter the health care support industry.
You might be even more amazed to learn that these salary levels are being paid, almost exclusively, to women, who account for 93% of all medical coding employees. Their male counterparts only fill 7% of the available positions in this profession. Notwithstanding the fact that equal pay legislation has been in force for many years, women still experience lower pay levels than men in many jobs but in the medical coding professions, this does not seem to be the case.
Influencing Factors:
However, not every medical coder earning a medical coding salary will find that they earn the same amount of salary each month and this is down to the fact that there can be a number of influencing factors. You can generally find three main reasons for differing salary levels:
- Location
- Environment
- Education
Location: If your preference is to live and work in a large city, then you will be virtually guaranteed to enjoy higher salary levels. It won’t be a surprise to learn that the higher costs of living in a city or town will, inevitably, result in a higher salary level to take account of this. For example, in January 2011 a medical coder working in Chicago could earn an hourly rate of between $16 and $24, whilst an employee doing precisely the same job in Indianapolis would be hard pressed to crack the $17.50 mark as their top hourly rate.
Education: You can certainly carve out a career in the health care sector at just about every level of education. However, if your colleagues all hold a Masters Degree as a matter of course, your salary in that company will certainly be higher than if a 1-year certificate is the general requirement. It is a fact if life that even when comparing salary levels within a single specialty, you will find that those having higher levels of education will be the highest earners.
Should you hold a Medical Billing and Coding Certificate, your hourly rate range would be in the region of $10 – $15 but should you be a Certified Coding Specialist (CCS), you would expect to receive £$15 – $23 per hour. Definitely a significant difference, isn’t it?
A similar rule applies to the amount of experience you can bring to the job – the more experience you have, the more you will be able to earn when compared with someone new to the profession.Environment: This element is frequently tied to location as the size of health care organization worked for will determine the medical coding salary readily available to you. Usually, the larger the employer, the higher the rate of pay. A small-scale medical office of, say, 1-9 employees may well offer an hourly rate of between $12 – $17 where as a substantial organization of 5000 – 20000 employees will often offer an hourly rate range of $15 – $21.
But what ever your educational achievements are, where ever you might like to live and work, Medical Billing and Coding Salary rates are certainly worth checking out when considering which career path you might like to follow..
