An office medical assistant is just one of the many job opportunities within the healthcare industry. This type of office position is slightly unique, because it requires a unique skillset. It is important for all medical office assistants to have both administrative and clinical skills. This combination is what makes this job different from many other administrative positions within offices.
Job Description for a Medical Office Assistant
The job description for a medical office assistant ranges slightly based on the place of employment. However, no matter where a medical office assistant is employed, it is noticeable that this job requires dual roles. The administrative duties that are expected include appointment scheduling, filling out insurance forms and other recording or bookkeeping duties that are necessary. The clinical job requirements for a medical office assistant likely include recording and monitoring vitals, obtaining lab samples, cleaning up and getting patients ready for examinations. A medical office assistant mainly handles all eth of the tasks before and after a patient meets with a physician.
What Salary is Expected?
Just like the salary for any other occupation, the salary you can expect as a medical office assistant ranges. The income range for this occupation normally varies between $27,790 and $39,990. This can be broken down into an hourly salary that ranges between $9.59 and $16.40. It should also be noted that the 10th percentile of medical assistants are paid $20,000 each year in salary. However, the median salary for this position is slightly higher at about $27,000. In contrast of eth 10th percentile, the 75th percentile obtains an annual income of $31,000. This is just below the $36,000 that is the annual average income for the 90th percentile of employed medical office assistants.
Experience and Salary
One of the major reasons for the disparity in salary among medical office assistants is experience. Experience is what makes salaries rise overtime and what likely accounts for the 90th percentile of high salaries in this occupation. More experience naturally equates to more compensation. Experience has such a drastic effect on salary that it can be broken down further for evaluation. Those that have less than one year of experience in the industry can expect an annual income of $24,790 to $34,392. However, medical office assistants with one to 4 years of experience make between $20,027 and $38,490. This is a jump in salary based on about 3 years of experience.
A higher salary increase can be seen at five years of experience. This is shown due to the fact that 5 to 9 years of experience results in annual salaries that range from $26,867 to $38,469. Once you reach about 20 years of experience in the field of medical office assistants, you can expect a salary that is between $40,000 and $47,840. This means that experience is one of the most important factors when it comes to determining annual salary.
What Does Location Mean?
Even though experience is what effects salary most drastically, location also plays a part. Salary ranges by state due to the fact that some states have higher cost of living, which results in higher salaries. The top paying state for a medical office assistant is California, but this is no surprise. California often has the highest salary rates due to the high cost of living in this state. Other notable states that are ranked as high paying for the Medical office assistant occupation include New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia and Ohio. The reason for the higher salaries is these states is due to the demand for this position in medical facilities.
Where You Work and Salary
Salary can also be effected by where you obtain employment. This means that working in a hospital will result in a different expected salary than working in a medical office. A medical office assistant has many places that are available for employment, but each offers a different expected salary. Individuals that work in a physician’s office can expect an hourly rate that ranges between $9.53 and $16.58. The hourly salary for working in a medical office is very similar at a range of $9.54 to $16.61. The biggest increase in hourly salary can be seen by those medical office assistants that work in hospitals. The range of hourly wage for this position is $9.66 to $17.12.
Education and Qualifications
Becoming a medical office assistant requires just basic level education from a GED or high school diploma. Many medical office assistants even gain more experience through vocation training or associate degree programs.
