Registered Health Information Technician (RHIT) Hourly Rate

A registered health information technician (RHIT) spends the majority of his or her day at a desk working on a computer. The RHIT frequently uses computer programs to track information about patients such as the cost of treatment and the length of a hospital stay. This information is used by the hospital's management when reviewing the budget for a department or determining whether additional staff members are needed. The job often becomes repetitive as the RHIT uses many of the same codes frequently throughout the day. However, RHITs may make themselves more valuable by specializing in certain areas of medicine. For example, some RHITs become cancer registrars or optometry coding specialists.
RHITs must be detail-oriented because they not only input patient information, but they also review the entered data for quality, accuracy and completeness. Incomplete or incorrect data could create major problems for the management team. Patient information is frequently input using codes that can be read by hospital employees and insurance companies. As such, an RHIT is expected to be very well versed in commonly used codes.
Hospitals frequently hire RHITs, but there are also job opportunities in pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies, public health agencies and private practice offices. When hiring an RHIT, employers look for successful completion of an associate's degree program in health information management and a passing score on the standardized examination created by the American Health Information Management Association. Students are permitted to take the examination more than once if they do not pass on the first try.

Registered Health Information Technician (RHIT) Tasks