As a health information professional, you possess skills that will open career opportunities in hospitals, ambulatory care, long-term care, managed care and physician practices.

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Employment Outlook-Health information technicians held about 170,000 jobs in 2006. Most were in hospitals, with the remainder mostly in physicians' offices, nursing care facilities, outpatient care centers, and home health care services. Insurance firms that deal in health matters employ a small number of health information technicians to tabulate and analyze health information.

Job prospects should be very good. Employment of health information technicians is expected to grow much faster than average for all occupations through 2014 because of rapid growth in the number of medical tests, treatments and procedures that will be increasingly scrutinized by health insurance companies, regulators, courts and consumers.

New jobs are expected in physician offices as a result of increasing demand for detailed records, especially in large group practices. Rapid growth also is expected in home health care services, outpatient care centers, and nursing and residential care facilities. Additional job openings will result from the need to replace technicians who retire or leave the occupation permanently. For salary information, visit the American Health Information Management Association (www.ahima.org). Resource: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A basic salary report, based on broad national data, reported exclusively by human resources departments of employers from all sizes, industries and locations (www.salary.com), showed the median salary for medical record technicians in the Chicago area to be $37,777. The 25th percentile was $33,158 and the 75th percentile was $41,411.