About This Site

Online Medical Coding Training is an independent career and certification data site. It does not sell training, rank schools or take payment from certifying bodies.

What the site does

The site answers the questions people ask before paying for medical coding training: what the job pays where they live, what the certification exams cost, how long the path takes, and how the field is expected to grow. Every page is built around a working tool, and every number comes from an official source or from the organization that sets the fee.

How results are computed

The training payback calculator divides your upfront cost (your program price plus the exam and membership fees you pick) by monthly gross pay, which is the BLS annual wage divided by 12. This is the simple payback period described in the U.S. EPA cost manual. The certification cost calculator adds exam fees, membership dues and recertification fees for the number of years you choose. The timeline planner divides program hours by weekly study hours and adds the scheduling rules AAPC and AHIMA publish. Comparisons and shares are plain differences and ratios of BLS figures.

Data sources

• Wages and employment: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, released May 15, 2026, for SOC 29-2072 Medical Records Specialists and SOC 43-3021 Billing and Posting Clerks. The bls.gov server refused requests from our build system, so the official files were taken from Internet Archive copies of the bls.gov download links and spot-checked against the BLS Public Data API (44 published values, all matching).
• Outlook, education and duties: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Medical Records Specialists.
• Occupation definitions: O*NET OnLine, U.S. Department of Labor.
• Exam, membership and recertification fees and rules: the AAPC and AHIMA websites, checked October 5, 2026.
• ICD-10-CM codes and guidelines: CMS FY 2027 files.

Updates

BLS publishes new OEWS estimates once a year. When a new release appears, the wage data file behind the calculators can be refreshed from the official files, and each page shows the release date of the data it uses. Fee tables show the date they were checked against the AAPC and AHIMA pages. If a figure on a certifying body's website differs from this site, the certifying body's figure is the one that applies.

See also the privacy policy and the disclaimer.