Medical Office & Health Information Tech

Medical records and health information technicians organize and manage health information data by ensuring its quality, accuracy, accessibility, and security in both paper and electronics systems. They use various classification systems to code and categorize patient information for insurance reimbursement purposes, for databases and registries, and to maintain patients’ medical treatment histories. Medical office assistant classes at Delta College will teach students to deal with these on-going issues.

Duties: All Technicians document patients’ health information, including the medical history, symptoms, examination and test results, treatments, and other information about healthcare provider services. Medical records and health information technicians’ duties vary with the size of the facility in which they work.

Medical records and health information technicians typically do the following:

• Review patient records for timeliness, completeness, accuracy, and appropriateness of health data
• Organize and maintain data for clinical databases and registries
• Track patient outcomes for quality assessment
• Use classification software to assign clinical codes for reimbursement and data analysis
• Electronically record data for collection, storage, analysis, retrieval, and reporting
• Protect patients’ health information for confidentiality authorized access for treatment, and data security

Although medical records and health information technicians do not provide direct patient care, they work regularly with physicians and other healthcare professionals. They meet with these workers to clarify diagnoses or to get additional information to make sure that records are complete and accurate.

The increasing use of electronic health records (EHRs) will continue to change the job responsibilities of medical records and health information technicians. Technicians will need to be familiar with, or be able to learn, EHR computer software, follow EHR security and privacy practices, and analyze electronic data to improve healthcare information as more healthcare providers and hospitals adopt EHR systems. The classes at Delta College seek to train students to handle these duties in the real world by giving them hands-on experience.

Employment of medical records and health information technicians is expected to increase by 9 percent from 2020 to 2030, faster than the average for all occupations.

*Information taken from the Occupational Outlook Handbook on the internet 9/15/2021

The median annual wage of medical records and health information technicians was $51,840 in May 2020. The median wage is the wage at which half the workers in an occupation earned more than that amount and half earned less. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $29,130, and the top 10 percent earned more than $105,690.

*Information taken from the Occupational Outlook Handbook on the internet 9/15/2021