If you’ve been considering going into the medical billing or medical coding field you need to have some idea what you can make in terms of salary or wages and before you even think about getting any training in either field. There are a wide range of salaries and hourly rates offered depending on the type of facility, clinic, hospital or business or other places where you might work.

A lot will depend on whether you’re specializing in medical billing, medical coding or both- often called medical insurance specialists. Medical billers are known by a number of names including Certified Medical Billing Specialist. When looking for a job in these fields you can find various different titles advertised making it harder to know exactly what the job responsibilities really consist of.

Traditionally the federal government has always been one of the highest paying employers in many fields including the health and medical fields but this may not be the case today. One has to do a lot of checking around to compare salaries and hourly rates because so much has been changing due to the economy.

Typically in a medical billing job you can expect to make about $ 12 to $ 13 an hour if you have one year of experience. The rate goes up accordingly as you add more work experience especially in the same field or in using similar medical software. Exceptions may be made and you may get a higher starting salary if you have related job experience, especially experiences that will be helpful in your medical billing or medical coding job.

If you have college education in business related classes or courses, this can also help. Of course you can take medical billing training or medical coding training through a local college or through one of the many online medical billing schools or trade or vocational schools. Before you to commit to any expensive contract make sure you check out all the other options. You may not need to take all the classes recommended to get into this field. You want to take the bare minimum of education needed because you’ll pick up a lot of knowledge on the job.

Often many of the courses and classes have been found not to be needed. This takes a bit of research to find out exactly what you need to get a job in the medical billing or coding fields. You can try calling the human resources departments of the local hospitals, clinics, insurance companies, government agencies and billing services and start getting a feel for what is required on these jobs in terms of education. And continue to research online of course.