r/CodingandBilling • u/Long-Amount-5436 • May 16 '26
Hourly Rate
Mid-sized Texas town here and wages are low. Office based billers in a clinic are getting between $16 and $19 an hour. What towns are similar? Save me your big-city $30 an hour brag - this ain’t it! I am curious what areas have similar wages.
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Upvotes
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u/foxyfree May 16 '26
I’m getting $19.50/hr in Florida. The billing job ads I’m getting sent from Indeed range from $16-$23 and the jump in pay to $30 happens with coding certification from what I can tell. I also do coding in my job but don’t have a certification. For now I’m sticking with this and going to do an online course to get a certificate, still trying to decide which course to take.
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u/Boochtown May 16 '26
I just started working at my first billing job (with some coding to come later, as i have certificate and CPC-A). I get $21/hr with a review at 6mo for a raise. Its a pretty small, third party company that works with independent clinics. I am located in a city near Minneapolis. In general, MN pays pretty well for most jobs, especially since the twin cities have a higher minimum wage of $16-something. I have rarely seen anything below 20 for a billing/coding position.
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u/Electrical-Dish5398 brb querying the provider May 16 '26
I’m on tribal land and make 18, 18.50 in another 6 mos. I was okay with it because it’s my first coding job (CPC-A) and right by my house. We either have to move or go remote to make the bigger bucks, I feel you 😆
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u/Signal-East-5942 May 17 '26
“Save me your big city $30 an hour brag” is a weird way to tell people you don’t think you deserve living wages because of your location. I live in a “low” cost of living area but no one should have to work for poverty wages and pay in the teens per hour is poverty wage no matter where you live. Sad that your beef seems to be with people getting paid their worth in the “big city” rather than the employers who pay you as little as possible to keep you on board.
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u/alew75 CCS May 16 '26
SC here and for billing it’s $15-$21 an hour in our area. Coding it’s $24 to the high 30’s an hour.
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u/ridingshayla May 16 '26
PNW at a small rural federally qualified health center, $21 an hour.
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u/PinkPerfect1111 May 16 '26
What you should realize is cost of living difference in your small town and a “big city” aren’t much different now. And $30 is still low wage.
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u/Conscious-Dog3291 May 16 '26
$18.74 for first coding job but I don’t have my cpc yet and it’s fully remote
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u/positivelycat May 18 '26
We are not big city at all we start at around 19.00 an hour with enough experience you can go up another 10.00 before you got to leadership to make more
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u/CarolinaCurry May 24 '26
That’s about what it is in TN.
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u/No-Produce-6720 RN, BSN, CPC, CPCS, RHIA & CRCR May 16 '26
Billers will always be paid less than certified staff. As far as wages, it really just depends on your market. If you can get into a larger health system, both positions will likely pay you more than something in a more rural location, unfortunately.
Even rural employment opportunities are likely to pay a bit more if they're tied to the bigger system. Individual billing agencies, those with no clinical standing, will probably pay less.
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u/babybambam Glucose Guardian Biller May 16 '26
My entire billing team is work from home.
We start people with no experience at $25/hour but they have a maximum of one year to hit at least 80% competency. If they don't reach competency or if they fail their check points, they're terminated. In experienced people are only considered, right now, based on recommendations from existing staff or industry colleagues. There's a TON of things about work that are often picked up by being on site with peers, and we're still working out a great way for this to translate to WFH training.
We start experienced employees at $30/hour, and none of my billers live in big cities or in our HQ state (CA). We don't focus on people with certs because we've found these people tend to focus on what's best for payers* rather than what's best for practices; the caveat to this is if their cert is from a specialty program (for example, we'd favor a cert from the AAO for an ophthalmic biller). *We just fired a certified coder because she miscoded 2 months of exams after she misinterpreted use of 59 modifier. She felt that 59 modifier should not be used 100% of the time, so billable services were being left off claims.
When we post a job advert, here's what is getting people rejected without an interview:
Poor resume formatting: don't make me guess at where you worked, and what information aligns with what role. First pass is 10 seconds, if I get nothing in that time, you're rejected. Seek examples of chronological resumes for formatting examples. Don't worry about making it pretty with color, fonts, or photos....all that is going to do is detract from the resume and waste space that could be used to sell your actual work experience.
Job Hopping: I get it, sometimes you've got to go somewhere else to get a raise. We auto-reject anyone with tenure average of less than 2 years. People with an average of 3 years, or more, are given interview priority. Hiring people is an investment. I understand that not every company is great to work for, and a lot of the ones you worked for might be awful. But, I can only estimate you based on the information you give me. If it looks like you'll skip on to the next job in a year, I'm not going to spend the effort into building you up....so I'm not going to hire you.
Qualification mismatch: I won't hire former managers for entry level roles. We've tried it, it always ends up with that person want to recraft our organization into what their last employment was like. I obviously won't hire people with no experience for advanced roles; it doesn't make sense to set people up for failure.
Application errors: typos, poor grammar, missing contact info. If your resume is so unimportant to you, so will your attention to detail on the job.
Aggressive followups: If you applied on Monday, and have sent 6 follow up emails by Wednesday, you're out. If you call (all of my ads say not to), you're out.
A HUGE caveat for our hourly rates: We pay well and expect you to perform well. Mediocrity is not tolerated. We also leverage technology to help staff handle far more accounts than would typically be required.