For a number of years, we’ve been working with, Pivot Point Consulting, A Vaco Company, to promote and share the results of their Health IT Market Survey. Thank you to each of you who participate in the survey. It’s always great to hear from the healthcare IT community when it comes to career trends.
You can check out the full results, but here are a few results that stood out to me:
- Since 2015, the average salary of HIT worker has increased by 12%, from $93,960 to $107,146.
- We’re seeing bonuses disappear—60% of HIT professionals said they did not receive one in 2017.
- The top three benefits for the past year are holding fairly steady: medical insurance, 401(k) matching, remote work, and tuition assistance have jockeyed spots but seem fairly consistently offered. And respondents said that after medical/dental/vision, the top benefit they want is remote work options (three years running).
I’m sure that most employers have felt the healthcare IT worker salary increase. Reminds me of one of my favorite stories. One time a doctor asked the EHR project lead why he had to do some work in the EHR and then asked: “Why can’t you just have the Epic consultant do it?” The EHR project lead replied, “No, actually you’re quite inexpensive compared to the Epic consultant.” Feel free to substitute your favorite EHR there since it seems to apply to them all, but you get the point. EHR expertise is not cheap.
I did find it ironic that bonuses were disappearing while salaries were increasing. I have a feeling that this might be skewed to the consultant crowd. We’ve certainly seen a shift in the market towards more full-time EHR and health IT professionals and so consulting companies haven’t been as profitable as before and therefore probably aren’t doing as many bonuses.
The remote work benefit is something that is happening across all of society it seems. Of course, we should cover the pros and cons of remote work in some future posts. It has some really great elements and some really challenging ones.
Be sure to take a minute to view the full HIT Market Survey results. Once you do, let us know what stood out to you in the comments below.
