Health Information Management major

Health Information Management: courses, careers, and where to study

Health information management is the study of how medical records are governed, coded, secured, and kept accurate across their full lifecycle in health care organizations.

Health Information Management prepares students to plan, design, and manage the systems, processes, and facilities used to collect, store, secure, retrieve, analyze, and transmit medical records and other health information used by clinical professionals and health care organizations. The major centers on the medical record itself: its accuracy, completeness, privacy, and integrity from the moment information is created through the day it is archived or destroyed. Students learn the classification and coding systems that translate diagnoses and procedures into standardized data, the rules that govern release of information and patient confidentiality, and the workflows that keep records trustworthy across departments. This focus sets the field apart from health informatics, which emphasizes the data science and analytics drawn from clinical information, and from healthcare administration, which concentrates on running facilities and overseeing operations and finance. Here the work is record governance, compliance, and data quality rather than analysis or facility leadership.

Programs are offered at the associate and bachelor's levels, and for the closely related occupation of health information technologists and medical registrars, an associate's degree is the typical entry-level education. Coursework pairs classroom study of medical terminology, anatomy, coding, and health law with applied components such as a coding practicum and a supervised professional practice experience in a hospital, clinic, or health information department. Some programs hold programmatic accreditation, and certain roles connect to credentialing examinations, so prospective students should verify a program's accreditation and the credential eligibility for the path they intend to follow. Graduates work in hospitals, physician practices, long-term care and behavioral health settings, insurance and managed-care organizations, public health agencies, registries, and consulting firms, where they protect the accuracy and confidentiality of health information and keep it available to authorized clinicians and organizations.

In federal data for the closely related occupation of health information technologists and medical registrars, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a 2024 median wage of $67,310 and projects employment to grow about 14.7% from 2024 to 2034; an associate's degree is the typical entry-level education for that occupation. National figures are occupation-wide medians across all experience levels, not starting wages or graduate outcomes.