After doing research and giving serious thought, you know you want to become a medical assistant. You love helping people, have interest in the medical field, and want a good job that would allow you to work an important job but also one with great opportunity for growth. However, you also know that for any of the different types of medical assistant jobs, salary is a big part of the final decision. Because there are different positions as an assistant of this type, medical assistant pay varies so we wanted to provide some helpful information to make your decision easier.
While some people look at medical assistant employment as an entry level job, and when looking at a job in a medical office it is, there is much more to it. Considering how much normal entry level jobs pay, it is hard to qualify this one at that same level. In other words, for someone interested in getting involved with the healthcare industry, medical assistant jobs are at the bottom but they are also jobs with great responsibility and good pay. Therefore, rather than look at a job such as this as “entry level”, it should be seen more as a career starter.
In addition, it is difficult to put a definition number on medical assistant pay because there are so many different factors involved. For instance, different types of medical assistant jobs are available. Some handle only office and administrative type work while others conduct lab testing and deal with patients. For this reason, salary would depend largely on the exactly type of medical assistant job a person would be most interested in working. Another consideration for medical assistant pay has to do with experience, as well as education and geographic location.
Now, when talking about medical assistant salary, the median level is around $28,300 a year, with the lower end being at $23,700 and the high end at $33,050. Then if you were to look at people with no experience or education, salary might dip 10% lower or increase by 10%, which would put medical assistant pay at $20,600 and $39,570 respectively. Just based on the median earnings, it is easy to see that for an “entry level” job, being a medical assistant is a great opportunity.
These statistics used only the primary areas involving medical assistant employment to include the following, starting with the highest paid salary first:
• General medical and surgical hospitals
• Colleges, universities, and professional schools
• Offices of physicians
• Outpatient care centers
• Offices of other healthcare providers
A perfect example of one type of medical assistant is with someone working with an occupational healthcare provider. In this case, duties would be under the doctor’s direction to include scheduling patient appointments, maintaining medical records, handling billing and insurance, taking/recording vital signs, getting a patient’s history, preparing patients for doctor’s exam, drawing blood, and administering medications. In this case, people made an average of $14.16 an hour or $29,450 annually.
Just as the information above shows the average you could make for medical assistant pay, this type of position is also available at a much higher level. For instance, medical assistant employment working in a substance abuse or psychiatric hospital could yield up to $22.32 an hour or $46,430 annually. If you wanted to work as a medical assistant working in a dentist office, pay would drop slightly to $17.27 an hour or $35,920 annually and for scientific research and development, $16.25 per hour or $33.810. In addition, some specialty positions would pay around $33,750 a year and for the local government, $31,900.
With this information, you can see the benefit of medical assistant jobs. If you were to secure the necessary certification and be willing to put in time to learn, the possibilities are endless. Even when taking on the basic position as a medical assistant, you would earn a nice living but then knowing you have room for growth, which would involve not only more money but also different responsibilities, this type of position makes perfect sense. In fact, many people who have gone on to become doctors started out working as medical assistants. If this were your ultimate goal, learning from the ground up would give you a huge advantageous.
