FierceHealthIT
Survey: HIT workers get lower salaries than desired
By: Katie Dvorak
The average salary in healthcare IT is about $87,000, according to a survey of workers' earnings.
After surveying more than 700 HIT workers, about 50 percent of whom work for hospital and health systems and 30 percent of whom work as contractors, HealthITJobs.com found that most received a salary lower than the one desired. The average desired salary was about $105,000.
Workers in New England earned the highest salary, at $99,963, while those in the Midwest had the lowest, at $80,311.
2015 Healthcare Information Technology Salary Report
Executive Summary
Health IT continues to be one of the fastest growing fields in the US for all of the reasons you might suspect – first HITECH, then the ACA and Meaningful Use, now ICD 10. There’s no question that health IT workers are in high demand, but are health IT salaries high enough to attract and keep the best talent? Exactly how much do health IT professionals earn? And what is the average healthcare information technology salary?
These are the questions the 2015 HealthITJobs.com Healthcare IT Salary Survey set out to answer. According to the results, the average health IT salary is $87,443 (Median $80,000) and the average bonus is $7,990 (Median $5,000). These numbers can swing significantly in either direction, depending on the specifics of the job in question. So which healthcare IT jobs pay the most? And what do the top earners have in common? Keep reading for the details.
About the Survey
More than 700 health IT workers took the survey, offering up not only their salary information, but other details like how much experience they have, their employer type, job titles, and even things that seem like they shouldn’t impact health IT salaries, such as age and gender.
Health IT Professionals at a Glance
Health IT spans a wide variety of skillsets and functions including EMR analyst, project managers, software developers and informatics. So exactly who made up our pool of respondents? More than two-thirds are currently working in health IT jobs, and nearly three-fourths have health IT experience. Most are permanent employees, though contractors took the survey as well.
Salary Expectations Versus Reality
Surprisingly a lot of health IT professionals don't think they are getting paid what they deserve. The average gap between what they earn and what they think they deserve is pretty significant at around an $18,000 difference. This is probably a driving force of why over 50% of respondents said they will change jobs within the next year.
Income by Location
Where you live will impact how much you earn, in some cases, pretty significantly. In looking at the country by region, it appears that New England health IT jobs pay the most, with jobs in the Mid-Atlantic and Mountain regions close behind. The other areas of the country fell more line with the overall average, with the exception of the Midwest, where the average health IT salary is $80,311.
Who earns the highest health IT salaries?
Income by Job Function
Not surprisingly, those with “executive” in their job titles reported earning the highest health IT salaries ($182,036). However, the sample size was small so keep that in mind. Below, we’ve ranked the top 5 job categories that had a minimum of 25 respondents.
For the second year in a row, Project Managers reported the highest average health IT salaries. This group also reported the highest average bonus of $12,702. Health IT Management salaries were the next highest at $105,235 with an average bonus of $9,923.
Respondents were also asked to report how much money they felt they deserved to be making, and interestingly enough, the highest earners, Project Managers, had the highest discrepancy between their average income ($107,674) and the average income they felt they deserved ($136,218).
Income by Organization Type
Consulting companies pay the highest health IT salaries, coming in at an average of $107,282. And while hospitals or health care systems are the most common type of employer among our respondents, this is not where they’ll find the most money. In fact, insurance companies, academic institutions and government organizations all came in ahead of hospitals and healthcare systems, where the average reported salary is $87,758
Income by Experience
If you guessed that the more experience you have, the more money you earn, well, you’d be right, and those with health IT experience earn 26% more than those with IT experience outside of healthcare. According to the survey, health IT professionals with more than 20 years of experience earn an average salary of $122,663.
Income by Employment and Salary Type
While 78% of the survey respondents are permanent employees, the results show that contract workers earn a higher average income. Most survey respondents reported being paid by salary, but contractors are often paid by the hour or by flat fee per assignment. Those being paid by flat fee earn significantly more (26%) than those being paid by the hour.
Income by Age and Gender
While men in health IT jobs earn slightly more than women – the average salary reported by women is 98.5% of what is reported by men – this discrepancy is significantly smaller than what was reported in the 2014 Salary Report. It’s also much smaller than the gap reported nationally (77%), suggesting that in health IT, gender does not significantly impact earnings.
Age, however, does appear to impact how much a health IT professional earns, but this is likely more a result of the experience that comes with age, rather than the age itself. The fact that 40-somethings are earning more than 20-somethings is no surprise, because they have more experience. The one exception was for the oldest age group. Those checking the box next to “65+” reported earning less than some of their younger counterparts, but this is likely due to reduced hours in preparation for retirement.
Year-Over-Year Comparison
Now in its second year, the Annual HealthITJobs.com Salary Survey can compare the average health IT salary in 2015 with the average reported salary in 2014. Unfortunately, the comparison shows a slight dip, but this can easily be explained by the standard deviation. Of course, those who tend to worry will wonder if this represents a trend of declining value on the role that health IT professionals play in healthcare, but for all the reasons noted in this report’s introduction, health IT jobs are not in danger. In fact, the salaries that accompany them will likely get more attractive as the competition for talent gets tougher.
Job Satisfaction and Income
The survey found 83% of health IT workers are satisfied with their jobs (up from 80% in 2014), and yet, over 50% said they will be looking for a new job in less than a year, and another 31% said they weren’t sure if they will stay in their current job or not. Is it their salary they’re unhappy with? For some, yes, but 45% of our respondents said they are satisfied with their income. Other sources of satisfaction are the ability to advance and the chance to do what they do best every day. Sources of dissatisfaction include current income, excessive workload, and hospital politics.
