Time Frame

• One of the most important factors in how much medical billing pays is how long someone has worked in the field. Medical billing specialists with job experience of one year or less earned a median wage of nearly $12 per hour, as of 2008. Those who had worked in medical billing for one to four years had a median hourly rate of $13. Billing specialists with five to nine years’ job experience earned about $14.50 per hour, and those with 10 years or more earned the highest hourly wages, with median pay of at least $15 per hour.
  
  

Considerations

• The level of education that medical billing specialists have can also impact the wage. Medical billers with some education in billing and coding earned a median wage just less than $13 per hour, while those with a certificate of completion earned more than $14 per hour. Medical billing specialists with a two-year degree in either arts or sciences also earned about $14 per hour, while those with an associate’s degree in business had a median wage of nearly $15 per hour.
  
  

Types

• The type of company that medical billing specialists work for can influence the pay rate. According to PayScale.com, medical billing specialists who work for the federal government had the lowest median wage of about $12.50 per hour, while those working for colleges or universities had the highest, at about $15.75. Self-employed medical billing specialists earned a median wage of $14.75 per hour, while those who worked for franchises earned nearly $13.50. Medical billing specialists who worked in hospitals, private practices, nonprofit organizations and most other companies had median wages between $14 and $14.50 per hour.
  
  

Geography

• Median hourly wages for medical billing specialists varies according to the part of the country the biller works in. Billing specialists in California and New York generally have the highest median wages, ranging from $15.50 to $15.80 per hour. However, the city of Chicago has a median wage of about $16 per hour. Billing specialists in Atlanta and Portland have a median wage of about $15 per hour, with cities such as Houston and St. Louis not far behind at $14.25 to $14.50 per hour. Medical billers in most of the rest of the country, including Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio, have median pay between $13 and $14 per hour.
  
  

Identification

• Unlike many other professions, which have a gender gap with men earning more than women, the pay of male and female medical billing specialists is very similar, with females slightly ahead. While females have a median hourly rate of $14.27, males earn $14.11. This could be because of the large number of females working in the industry. Out of the 2,626 people who responded to PayScale.com’s hourly wage survey for medical billing specialists, more than 95 percent were female.