As a health information professional, you will be required to accumulate diagnoses, results, doctor transcripts, personal information, insurance info and diagnosis tests into one file. This is done in doctors' offices and hospitals.
Other duties that you will have as a health information specialist is coding, which is the use of numerical codes for patient medical records that are submitted to insurance agencies. Some even use the data for research purposes, legal proceedings and costs assessment.
Health information professionals are known to work with the medical system, hospitals and doctor offices. Then there are others that are employed within companies that offer health care record keeping for various practices and organizations.
To work as a health information professional, you will need to obtain formal training in medical terminology and privacy laws. You will also have to learn about other regulations and how they affect health care patient records that are being stored and accessed. Many employers want employees that have post secondary training, like an associate's degree in health information science or a certificate from a medical training institution.
The average annual salary for health information specialists is around $32,000.
