Health Information Technology

Medical transcriptionists write down recordings from physicians and other health care professionals about medication, diagnosis, medical histories, and treatment plans. Medical transcriptionists work for hospitals, physicians’ offices, or third-party employers.

The Bureau of Labor statistics projects this occupation will grow slower than average, due to an unknown effect electronic records will have in health care.

A Health Information Technician (HIT) is also known as a Medical Record Technician. HITs are not licensed.

Registration is voluntary but recommended. Graduates of an associate degree program accredited by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) are eligible for the national accreditation examination, sponsored by AHIMA, to become Registered Health Information Technicians (RHITs).

Medical coders create the bills sent to insurance companies, Medicare, and Medicaid by health care providers.

Coders translate the language of health care professionals into the computer language of insurance companies’ payment systems.

Unfortunately, there are many unscrupulous medical coding programs that do not teach acceptable skills and are not certified. Be sure to search for fully accredited medical coding programs before exploring medical coding http://www.ahima.org/careers/college_search/search.aspx.

The revolution in health care will be computerized. Managing the development, implementation, and use of electronic health records will be an essential part of hospitals and large employers.

By 2016, all health care providers must have implemented electrnoic health records, expanding the roles of health information managers.

As patient data become more frequently used for quality management and in medical research, health information managers must ensure that databases are complete, accurate, and available only to authorized personnel