A lot of people seem to fail to be able to identify the differences between a Certified Medical Assistant (CMA) and a Registered Medical Assistant (RMA), mostly because at first glance, they pretty much look like they are the same thing.
Even though both CMA’s and RMA’s have the same job responsibilities and duties, such as recording the health history of a patient and all of those medical tasks, they do have a few differences between them and we are going to be looking at them in this article.
To start off the differences, a CMA gets his title honored by the American Association of Medical Assistants, which is a different organization than the one that certifies the titles of RMA’s. The certification a CMA has should be renewed in 5 year intervals so that the medical assistant can be up to date and so that he can perform his duties properly.
On the other hand, RMA’s are honored by an on-profit organization that goes by the name of American Medical Technologists. This small difference might be a game changer for some employers, but for most of them, this isn’t really a big deal at all. After all, both CMA’s and RMA’s are going to be performing the same tasks.
A few states, however, only seem to recognize CMA’s as truly certified professionals and only consider them whenever they have a job that really requires someone to be able to do things properly. In some states in the USA, CMA’s are even required to be Certified Nursing Assistants (CNA) before they can actually develop to CMA’s.
According to a website that takes care of payment surveys online, the income differs between CMA’s and RMA’s. According to the website, a RMA can make around $ 26,900 per year, while a CMA with the same qualifications and the same background can go up to $ 29,943 per year. This is clearly a notable difference, especially considering that the job is pretty much the same for both CMA’s and RMA’s.
The final and most important difference between these two is that a RMA credential is going to register the individual as a medical assistant, while a CMA credential will be showing that the individual is certified as a medical assistant. This is why there is a bigger demand and a bigger return on investment for CMA’s – they are certified, not simply registered.
At the end of the day, however, these two have the same job, the same responsibilities and have to perform the same tasks. What they’re going to do, is that they are going to be helping health professionals with what they do so that they can relieve the burden they might have after a while working in the area.