Online Medical Classes

Which career field pays more? Medical billing and coding or Medical office assistant?

I live in florida, and I want to get an online degree from penn foster, but i want to know which of the two gets paid better and also which is more likely to be in demand... i don't want to study something that isn't in demand and is impossible to find a job.

Public Comments

1. Before you start schooling for either field, call around your local hospitals and a few doctor's offices to find out if they will even hire someone with an online degree but no experience. Many, many people have paid thousands of dollars to these online degrees only to find out they cannot get a job because they have no experience.
2. I am an instructor in CA. I teach medical front office assisting and medical billing and coding. Usually medical billing and coding pays better and has an even better demand than front office assisting. Starlight has an excellent point about researching whether or not employers will hire graduates of that school. Find out which schools they do like. If you want to go for the money, as long as Obama-care doesn't change things too much, the best thing to study is hospital coding. Look up job postings and find out what their requirements are. Hospital coding is likely to keep increasing as the baby boomers continue to age. If you want to have your own business eventually, you can study either physician and/or hospital billing. Keep in mind though it can take a while to break into the industry because of course they all want experience. Ironically some of my medical billing and coding students initially get hired on as a front office assistant because they know the billing stuff already.
3. Please steer clear of those online, for-profit schools such as penn foster, ashworth, devry, university of phoenix, strayer, everest, kaplan, ITT tech, sanford brown, argosy, remington and others as they are merely out to 'make a profit' (and course credits may Not transfer to other schools): http://www.complaintsboard.com and can search. With medical billing & coding and MA, please be aware that there are Not supposed to be too many jobs despite what those private $$ for-profit tech schools say. If still interested in training, please consider the more affordable county vo-tech school or community college if the program is accredited within the industry.