Quick answer: Health information management is the most genuinely online degree in this group. Health information technologists and medical registrars earn a median $68,020 per year, or $32.70 per hour (BLS OEWS, May 2025). The credential runs through a CAHIIM-accredited bachelor’s degree in health information management.
Health Information Management at a Glance
Measure
Value
Median annual wage
$68,020
Median hourly wage
$32.70
Employed nationally
38,100
Bottom 10 percent
$39,830
Top 10 percent
$117,420
Middle half
$48,940 to $95,630
Projected change, 2024-34
14.7%
Annual openings
about 3,200
Wage and employment figures: BLS OEWS, May 2025. Growth and openings: BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34.
What Do Online Health Information Management Programs Actually Look Like?
Health information management is the most genuinely online degree in this group. The work is data governance, coding standards, privacy law and information systems rather than patient contact, so CAHIIM-accredited programs deliver at a distance without the compromise that clinical fields face. A professional practice experience is still typically required.
Where This Sits on the Ladder
This is the licensed tier above credentials many readers already hold. The rungs run:
Medical biller or coder - certificate, assigns and submits codes
Health information technician - CAHIIM-accredited associate degree, RHIT eligible
Health information manager - CAHIIM-accredited bachelor’s degree, RHIA eligible, owns data governance
How Fast Is the Field Growing?
Employment is projected to change by 14.7% between 2024 and 2034, with roughly 3,200 openings a year (BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34). Openings come from growth and from replacing people who leave the occupation, which is why the annual figure can look large relative to the percentage.
Why CAHIIM Accreditation Decides the Outcome
CAHIIM accredits health information management programs, and that accreditation is what routes graduates to AHIMA credentials, RHIT at the associate level and RHIA at the bachelor’s level. Employers hiring for these roles generally recruit against those credentials, so accreditation determines which jobs the degree opens.
Separately from programmatic accreditation, the institution itself should hold accreditation from a recognized institutional accreditor. Credit transfer between institutions is decided by the receiving school and genuinely varies, so get any transfer evaluation in writing before enrolling.
What Does the Job Involve Day to Day?
Health information managers own the integrity of the clinical record: coding accuracy and audit exposure, release-of-information and privacy compliance, registry reporting, and the data quality that reimbursement and quality measures are calculated from. It is the analytical path out of coding, and it moves a career from processing records to governing them.
Where Do Health information technologists and medical registrars Earn the Most?
State
Median annual wage
Employment
Arkansas
$93,300
not published
Minnesota
$90,760
1,040
California
$90,750
2,920
Wisconsin
$89,260
650
Wyoming
$88,560
50
Highest-paying states, BLS OEWS, May 2025. Cost of living is not held constant, so a higher median does not automatically mean more disposable income.
Licensing and Credentialing
The national framework is the constant: a CAHIIM-accredited program, then the RHIA examination administered through AHIMA. What sits on top of that framework is set jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and this site does not hold a sourced dataset of per-state rules, so confirm the specifics with the credentialing requirements of the employers you are targeting before enrolling.
What You Will Study
Coursework covers classification and terminology systems, reimbursement methodologies, health data structures and standards, privacy and security law, database and information systems, statistics and quality management, plus the organizational and leadership content that separates the bachelor’s tier from the technician tier. Increasingly programs carry analytics and informatics coursework, which is where much of the demand growth actually sits.
Cost, Time and Whether It Pays
This site does not publish tuition figures, because there is no sourced dataset behind them and the number varies enormously by institution and residency. What can be stated is the wage structure the degree leads into. The middle half of health information technologists and medical registrars earn between $48,940 and $95,630, with the bottom 10 percent at $39,830 and the top 10 percent at $117,420 (BLS OEWS, May 2025). The gap between the 25th and 75th percentile is the honest range to plan against - not the median alone, and not the top figure.
How to Choose a Program
Confirm CAHIIM accreditation directly, because eligibility for AHIMA credentials depends on it and that eligibility is the practical reason to take the degree. Establish whether the program prepares you for RHIA specifically rather than RHIT. Ask how the professional practice experience is arranged, and whether prior coding coursework or credentials shorten the sequence, remembering that transfer decisions belong to the receiving institution.
Where the Jobs Are
State
Employment
Median annual wage
California
2,920
$90,750
Texas
2,880
$76,820
Ohio
2,500
$71,330
North Carolina
2,370
$63,010
Florida
2,360
$76,950
Largest employing states, BLS OEWS, May 2025. Employment concentration and pay do not track each other, which is why the highest-paying states above are not the same list. State and metro pages linked below carry the full distribution.
What to Weigh Before Committing
The realistic caution is that the wide published wage range reflects genuinely different jobs inside one occupation, from registrar roles at the bottom to department management at the top, and the degree is what moves someone up that range rather than something that starts them near the top. Automation in coding is also a real pressure on the tier below. That pressure is precisely the argument for the management tier: governance, privacy, analytics and audit defense are where the work is moving, and it is one of the few genuinely remote-friendly healthcare paths.
Questions to Ask an Admissions Office
Ask these before an application fee, and get the answers in writing rather than over the phone:
Is the program currently with accreditation from CAHIIM, and has its status changed in the last three years? Verify the answer against CAHIIM directly rather than the program’s own page.
Who arranges the required in-person hours, the program or the student, and what happens if no site is available in my cohort year?
What is the published first-time pass rate for the RHIA examination, and for which graduating class?
Which prior coursework or credentials transfer in, and will you evaluate my transcript in writing before I enroll? Transfer is decided by the receiving institution and genuinely varies.
What is the total time to completion for someone in my situation, including prerequisites, and how many students in the last cohort finished on that schedule?
Colleges Offering This Degree
How we rank schools – graduation rate, graduate earnings, cost and retention.
Advertising plays no part.
This page lists 10 schools, closest group first, then ordered by
BOC Score with the highest at the top.
10 of them carry a score.
LOCAL RANK
Location / proximity to this page
Defines the local group
Graduation rate how often students finish
30%
Median earnings, 10 years after entry whether it paid off
25%
Average net price what students actually pay after aid; lower ranks higher
20%
Retention rate how many come back for year two
15%
Fully online availability whether you can study while working
10%
Scores come from IPEDS (2024) and the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard.
Earnings are for all graduates of a school, not one program, so treat them as a signal
about the institution rather than about this subject.
Sponsored listings are paid placements and are labelled as such; they are separate from
this ranking and never change it. Read the full methodology.
Can you earn a health information management degree online?
Yes, and more completely than any other degree in this group. The subject matter is records, standards, privacy law and information systems rather than hands-on patient care. CAHIIM-accredited programs commonly still include a professional practice experience, which may be arranged locally.
How much do health information professionals make?
The national median annual wage for health information technologists and medical registrars is $68,020, or $32.70 per hour (BLS OEWS, May 2025). The bottom 10 percent earn $39,830 or less and the top 10 percent earn $117,420 or more, across 38,100 people nationally. The range is unusually wide because it spans registrar roles through management.
What is the difference between RHIT and RHIA?
RHIT is the AHIMA credential associated with a CAHIIM-accredited associate degree and technician-level work. RHIA is associated with a CAHIIM-accredited bachelor's degree and management-level responsibility for data governance, privacy and department operations.
Is this a good step up from medical billing and coding?
It is the standard one. Coding teaches the classification systems and the documentation problems firsthand, which is exactly the background the management tier draws on. Whether prior coursework transfers is decided by the receiving institution and varies, but the domain knowledge carries over regardless.
Is health information management a growing field?
Employment of health information technologists and medical registrars is projected to change by 14.7% from 2024 to 2034, with about 3,200 openings per year (BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34), driven by electronic record complexity and reporting requirements.
Is health information management a remote-friendly career?
More than most healthcare roles, because the work is data and compliance rather than direct patient care. Coding and registry functions in particular are frequently performed remotely. Management positions with department responsibility are more often on site or hybrid, and arrangements differ by employer.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025, SOC 29-9021 Health Information Technologists and Medical Registrars.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections program, 2024-34.
About this guide: Researched and written by the TradeCareerPath Editorial Team. Our editorial team researches and sources every trade school and career guide using federal labor and education data, including BLS OEWS and Employment Projections, DOL apprenticeship records, IPEDS, College Scorecard, and state licensing boards. We follow the editorial standards documented at /editorial-policy/.
