Health information technicians usually work in clinical settings or in hospitals that are often open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Health information technicians may work day, evening, and night shifts. It is one of the few health-related occupations in which there is little or no direct contact with patients simply because they deal with records and spend most time on a compute or working with EHR (Career Guide, 2017).
Education Requirement
For a health information technician is ideal that one receives the proper training and education to perform such duties. As far as college, it is only ideal to have an associate’s degree in a programs of health information technology. “It typically includes courses in medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, health data requirements and standards, classification and coding systems, healthcare reimbursement methods, healthcare statistics, and computer systems (BLS, 2015).” Beside obtaining an associate degree, information technicians need to be properly certified by certain organizations such as Registered Health Information Technician (RHIT) or the Certified Tumor Registrar (CTR) to name a few (BLS, 2015). One must pass a written examination offered by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and
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Such skill includes analytical skills, one must be detail oriented, integrity, interpersonal skills and technical skills (BLS, 2015). These skills will provide “understanding and following medical records and diagnoses, and then decide how best to code them in a patient’s medical records. Technicians work with patient data that are required, by law, to be kept confidential, therefore understand that information must be kept private when necessary. Lastly, they must be able to use coding and classification software and the electronic health record (EHR) system (BLS,