Salary for Medical Assistants
The medical assistant profession is one fastest growing profession of today. According to the “United States Department of Labor – Bureau of Labor Statistics”, career opportunities for medical assistants are extremely high because of the high demand in the health care service industry. And the demand for medical assistant is anticipated to grow until the year 2012.
Because of the high demand of medical assistants, salary for medical assistants is about ten to fifteen dollars an hour in the United States. The salary for medical assistants varies according to location, experience and type of facility in which the medical assistant is employed. However the prospects of employment for medical assistants is high if the medical assistant has formal training on accredited medical assisting courses or programs and has successfully passed the national certification examination.
The average salary for medical assistants in the United States on the year 2002 is around twenty-four thousand dollars. Fifty percent of all medical assistants have salaries ranging from as low as twenty thousand dollars to as high as twenty-eight thousand dollars. Ten percent of all medical assistants earn as low as seventeen thousand dollars. While the high ten percent of the salary for medical assistants are at thirty-four thousand dollars.
The average salary for medical assistants employed by some general medical and surgical hospitals is about twenty-five thousand dollars. While the average salary for medical assistants working on offices of physicians are over twenty-four thousand dollars. For medical assistants working on outpatient care centers is around twenty-three thousand dollars nearing twenty-four thousand dollars. Medical assistants working on other ambulatory health care services earn a little over twenty-three thousand dollars. And the average salary for medical assistants working on offices of other health practitioners earns a little over twenty-one thousand dollars.
As with any occupation, the salary for medical assistants corresponds with the education, qualification and the years of experience on the related occupation. If a medical assistant has taken formal training on medical assistant courses and programs, the compensation is usually above average. If the medical assistant has proven its importance or worth to the employer, the medical assistant will tend to work on the same office or facility for many years and will gradually move up within the same organization. Some medical assistants grow out into different roles and are offered additional responsibilities if they stay with the same company or organization.
With the employment growth of the medical assistants rapidly increasing, so is the demand for the said profession. Graduates of medical assistant courses and programs are expected to find employment on various health care service settings and it makes the salary for medical assistant very much attractive not to mention the added compensations and benefits.