HIMDegree.com is an independent guide to health information management, health informatics, medical coding, and healthcare data education, founded by Alex Barnes, Mia Marcus, and Lia Vargas. Alex Barnes holds a Ph.D. in Health Informatics from the University of Minnesota with RHIA and CPHIMS credentials and more than twenty years in health informatics and healthcare IT leadership. Mia Marcus holds an M.S. in Health Information Management from the University of Wisconsin with RHIA and CCS and fifteen years as an HIM program director. Lia Vargas holds an M.S. in Data Science from the University of Michigan with RHIA and CHDA and twelve years in healthcare analytics. We track 328 CAHIIM-accredited programs at 287 institutions, conduct proprietary graduate research including our 2026 Career Outcomes Survey of 1,127 graduates, and take no payment from the schools we cover. Last updated August 2026.
Neutrality on these questions is not a virtue, it is a choice that favors whoever is spending the most on advertising. The most heavily marketed products in health information education are non-accredited certificates that cannot lead to the credential employers require. A site that presents those alongside accredited degrees without comment is not being balanced. It is being useless to the person making the decision.
Why we started HIMDegree.com
Between us we have spent decades on both sides of this decision: directing accredited programs, hiring into health information departments, and building the analytics teams graduates eventually want to join. The recurring experience that produced this site is a specific conversation, repeated for years, with a person who had already made an expensive mistake that nobody had warned them about.
Usually one of three. They bought a non-accredited certificate advertised as a route to a coding career, and discovered at exam registration that it does not confer RHIT eligibility. They finished an accredited degree and never sat the certification exam, and are now four years into a career that pays $25,000 less than it should. Or they chose a program on reputation, got no practicum worth the name, and graduated having never touched a live health record.
Every one of those outcomes is preventable with information that already exists and is simply not presented clearly anywhere. That is what this site is for. It is not neutral, because neutrality on these questions is itself a choice that favors whoever is spending the most on advertising.
Meet the team
Alex Barnes
Executive Director and Health Informatics Lead
Alex has spent more than twenty years inside health information management, health informatics, and healthcare IT leadership. That includes a run as Director of Health Informatics at a major health system, where the job was less about picking software and more about explaining to clinicians why the data they were entering would be used against them in a quality report six months later.
The academic half of that career matters here because it shapes what this site will and will not publish. Alex has held faculty appointments at multiple universities and published research on EHR implementation, health data standards, and informatics education. Every technical claim on this site about health information systems, interoperability, or data governance goes through him, and he cuts anything that sounds authoritative but cannot be traced to a source.
His position on program selection is consistent and unpopular with admissions offices: the accreditation status of a program is a floor, not a recommendation. CAHIIM accreditation tells you the exam door is open. It does not tell you whether the program taught you SQL, and in 2026 that gap is the difference between a $52,000 job and an $85,000 one.
- Education
- Ph.D. in Health Informatics, University of Minnesota · M.S. in Health Information Management, University of Illinois at Chicago · B.S. in Healthcare Administration, University of Iowa
- Certifications
- RHIA (Registered Health Information Administrator) · CPHIMS (Certified Professional in Health Information Management Systems)
- Covers
- Health informatics and HIM content, program evaluations, and data accuracy across the site.
- Expertise
- health informatics, electronic health record implementation, health data standards, data governance, healthcare technology adoption, informatics education
Mia Marcus
Director of HIM Education and Career Pathways
Mia has fifteen years in health information management education and career development, most of it as a Program Director responsible for the outcomes of real cohorts at multiple colleges. She has signed off on curricula, built practicum partnerships with hospital HIM departments, and had the conversation with graduates who could not sit for an exam because of a course they skipped.
That experience is why she owns the career and credential sections. She built the credential comparison framework used across this site, and she is the reason we refuse to treat a certificate, an associate degree, and a bachelor degree as interchangeable routes to the same job. They are not, and the credential you become eligible for is the entire point.
Her recurring argument to students is about sequencing. Sit the exam within six months of graduating, while the material is still loaded. Our 2026 survey found that graduates who delayed certification past a year were substantially more likely to still be in an entry-level records role three years later. The delay is not neutral. It compounds.
- Education
- M.S. in Health Information Management, University of Wisconsin · B.S. in Health Sciences, University of Illinois · AHIMA Approved ICD-10 Trainer
- Certifications
- RHIA · CCS (Certified Coding Specialist)
- Covers
- HIM careers, program comparisons, credential pathways, and student success strategy.
- Expertise
- HIM curriculum design, credentialing pathways, workforce development, medical coding education, practicum and internship placement, student career strategy
Lia Vargas
Director of Healthcare Analytics and Data Science
Lia has twelve years in healthcare analytics and data science, working with health systems and public health organizations on population health analytics, clinical data warehousing, and predictive modeling for healthcare outcomes. She came up through HIM rather than through computer science, which is exactly why she is useful to the students reading this site.
She covers the part of the field where the compensation curve actually bends. Her section of the site exists because the single most common mistake we see is a capable HIM graduate who assumed analytics was a separate profession requiring a different degree. It is not. It is a set of skills bolted onto the domain knowledge they already have, and the bolt-on is the cheapest career move available to them.
Her standing advice is blunt about tooling. Learn SQL before you learn anything else, learn it properly rather than through a two-week module, and build something with real claims or EHR-shaped data before you interview. Dashboard software changes every three years. The ability to reason about a messy clinical data model does not.
- Education
- M.S. in Data Science, University of Michigan · B.S. in Health Information Management, University of Washington
- Certifications
- RHIA · CHDA (Certified Health Data Analyst)
- Covers
- Healthcare analytics, data science careers, and emerging technology in health information.
- Expertise
- healthcare analytics, population health analytics, clinical data warehousing, predictive modeling, healthcare AI applications, health data science careers
Our mission
To make the health information education decision legible, so that the choice between programs is made on accreditation, practicum, technology content, and cost rather than on advertising spend. We measure ourselves against one question: would a student who read this site make a better decision than one who did not?
Editorial policy
We separate three categories of statement and mark them differently, because blending them is the main failure of education publishing.
- Published fact: what an institution or CAHIIM states about a program. Presented as fact with a link to the source.
- Cited data: federal statistics and our own survey research. Presented with the source named and the sample described.
- Editorial opinion: our judgment. Presented in a marked box headed "Our position" and written as an argument you can push back on.
We also publish what we do not know. Our Quality Index cannot measure teaching quality, admission selectivity, or whether any individual gets hired, and the methodology page says so at length rather than implying a precision we do not have.
How we make money
Not from the institutions we cover. No school pays to be included, ranked higher, or removed, and we accept no placement fees or lead-generation revenue from any program on this site. If that ever changes we will say so on this page before it takes effect.
The practical evidence is in the rankings themselves. Community colleges frequently outrank well-known universities in our index because cost value and practicum are weighted and prestige is not. A site funded by institutional placement fees does not produce that ordering.
Our research
The Health Information Management Career Outcomes Survey 2026 surveyed 1,127 health information graduates from the classes of 2020 through 2025, fielded January to March 2026. It is proprietary research conducted by our team and it is the evidence base behind most of the positions we take.
We also maintain the accredited program database behind this site: 328 CAHIIM-accredited programs at 287 institutions across 48 states, with accreditation status, review cycle, delivery format, program director credentials, and a link to each official program page. It is available as JSON and CSV for anyone who wants to check our work or use the data.
Full methodology, including the survey design and the seven-factor index, is on the methodology page.
Corrections
Accreditation statuses change, programs close and open, exam fees rise, and federal wage data updates annually. We review the site on a rolling basis and date every page. If you find something wrong, tell us what and where. We verify against the primary source and correct it, and we would rather be corrected than be confidently wrong in public.
Frequently asked questions
Are you paid by the schools you rank?
No. We take no payment, placement fee, or lead-generation revenue from any institution on this site, and no institution can pay to be included, ranked higher, or removed. This is why our rankings include community colleges ahead of well-known universities where the documented attributes support it.
Where does your program data come from?
Accreditation data from CAHIIM, the accreditor for health information management and health informatics programs, combined with institutional program pages. Every one of the 328 programs in our database is CAHIIM-accredited, and each record links to the institution's own page as the authoritative source.
Is your survey data real?
Yes. The Health Information Management Career Outcomes Survey 2026 is proprietary research conducted by our team, covering 1,127 graduates from the classes of 2020 through 2025, fielded January to March 2026. We publish the sample size, the period, and the population alongside every figure we cite from it so you can weigh it appropriately.
How do you handle opinions?
We label them. Every editorial position on this site appears in a marked box headed "Our position" and is written as an argument you can disagree with. Published facts and cited federal data appear in normal prose with sources named. We think blending the two is the main failure of education content.
Can I suggest a correction?
Yes, and we would rather be corrected than be wrong. Accreditation statuses change, programs close, and wage data updates annually. If something on this site is out of date or incorrect, tell us what and where, and we will verify against the primary source and fix it.