Medical Billing and Coding Salary Range

You will find many contemplating planning to work or starting a career as a medical biller or coder you're probably wondering what kind of salary to expect. A biller or billing specialist helps process insurance claims and can have a variety of titles including Medical Billing Specialist, which requires national certification by taking and passing a national exam. A medical coder or coding specialist does the coding and is a separate profession.

A coder helps code insurance claims and this is usually done before they reach medical billing services.
If you intend to adopt billing or coding training understand that there is certainly a lot of money designed for online or on-campus classes, see end of article.

Try your phone directory and see how many billing services or medical billing services there are in your area. Many large clinics and doctors' offices may do their billing in-house.

If you've had billing training or medical coding training you should start at a good salary. If possible, call some of the billing services you find listed and ask if taking a few online classes is enough or if a Medical Billing Specialist certificate is required or not and if it will get you a higher salary. Ask how often billing and coding jobs become available. Ask if they do coding also, if you're interested in coding, most do.

The salary range for a Medical Billing Assistant or Specialist generally runs between $26,000 to $32,000 a year but will depend a lot on the area of the country you live in, your education and any previous job experience you have that relates to this field. Of course, if you have previous job experience you'll make more and possibly more than these upper limits. An hourly rate can be anywhere from $11 to $21 an hour or more.

You may be able to get billing work to do at home but it may require expensive software. And this is not the way to go unless you have plenty of experience in the field and know what you're doing.

As a medical coder, you can make from $25,600 to $41,800 or more depending again on where you live, education, training and experience. If you have a master's degree, you'll earn more, averaging $57,000 a year or so, which is more than you would with an associate or bachelor's degree.

However, most medical billing and medical coding careers do not require extensive education or training. Generally, a few online classes are enough to get a good job with a good salary in either field. Whenever you make your calls, you are able to ask if college degrees are required or if classes on the web are thought enough training. I mention this because each company has different criteria also it doesn't hurt to obtain some comparisons.

You will get medical coding or billing training online or at local universites and colleges. However many people take their medical billing classes or programs online from specialized schools.

You need to research these schools thoroughly and compare classes, programs and expectations to obtain the best medical and coding schools. In order to save money you won't want to take any classes you do not need. Some schools will attempt to obtain new students to consider medical terminology along with other classes they do not need also it wouldn't affect your future salary. There's lots of educational funding along with other money readily available for classes on the web including medical billing and coding classes and training.