Health Information Management

The discipline that owns the medical record — its completeness, its accuracy, its legal standing, its privacy, and the coded data every hospital's reporting and reimbursement runs on. ⚠⚠⚠ This is the ONE route in the health-information family that leads to the field's professional credentials, because RHIT eligibility requires an ASSOCIATE DEGREE from a CAHIIM-accredited programme. Taught at 31 Florida public institutions.

The degrees this program covers

⚠⚠⚠ THE ACCREDITATION IS THE PRODUCT. AHIMA's rule for the RHIT examination is that you must have completed the academic requirements, at associate degree level, of a Health Information Management programme accredited by CAHIIM — the Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education. ⚠⚠ A certificate does not qualify, however good it is, and ⚠⚠⚠ AHIMA states that HEALTH INFORMATICS degrees are NOT currently accepted for RHIT either. That is the trap worth knowing before you enrol: a degree whose name sounds newer and more technical can leave you unable to sit the examination the field hires on. Ask the programme for its CAHIIM accreditation and check it with CAHIIM. ⚠ Florida awards 296 credentials a year across these codes — 169 under health information technology (109 of them associate degrees) and 127 under the administration code, which is the bachelor's-level RHIA route. ⚠⚠ Read the course numbers as the map: Florida puts this programme at HIM1xxx and HIM2xxx, which are COLLEGE CREDIT, while the coder/biller certificates sit at HIM0xxx, which are CLOCK HOURS. The level digit is what decides whether the hours can ever become a degree. ⚠ Look for HIM2960, the credentialing examination review course, in a programme's plan — nine institutions list a coding or review capstone and it is a good sign that the programme is aimed at the credential rather than at the certificate.

Careers this program leads to

Each one sets out the courses along the way, the licence or certification at the end, and the sources behind it.

Health Care Administrator

Running the non-clinical half of health care — budgets, staffing, quality, compliance, revenue, regulators. $123,860 median, 616,200 employed, 62,100 openings a year, growing much faster than average. ⚠⚠ There is no required major: Census microdata puts HEALTH first at 169,319 people, BUSINESS second at 75,396 and PSYCHOLOGY third at 47,154. ⚠⚠⚠ But Florida statute puts a price on the choice — on the nursing home side, a health administration major halves the required training programme from 2,000 hours to 1,000.

Health Information Technician, Coder and Medical Office Administrator

⚠⚠⚠ Three different routes wear this name in Florida, they are taught at roughly the same number of institutions, and only ONE of them leads to the field's professional credential. Health information management — 31 institutions, and the associate degree is what makes you RHIT-eligible. Billing and coding — 37 institutions and the largest output, all clock-hour certificates, none of which does. Medical office administration — 36 institutions into an occupation of 850,000 people with no credential ladder at all. ⚠⚠ Choosing wrongly does not waste a term; it forecloses the credential.

Public Health Professional

⚠⚠⚠ The job most students picture when they say public health is the smallest one in the federal data. Epidemiologists: 12,300 employed in the whole country, about 800 openings a year, and entry is effectively 100% graduate. The jobs are in health education (71,800, $64,070) and community health work (65,100, $51,850, high-school entry). ⚠⚠ Florida's own numbers say the same thing from the other side — 579 master's degrees against 560 bachelor's, at just 8 institutions, every one a university.

Programs similar to this one

Neighbouring fields that share much of the same coursework, and often the same employers. ⚠ Read these before you commit to a major — which doors a neighbouring degree keeps open is the part no catalog tells you, and it is far cheaper to change now than later.

Medical Billing and Coding 37 Florida schools

⚠⚠⚠ The route students most often confuse with this one, and the difference decides a career. Billing and coding is taught at 37 Florida institutions against 31 here and awards more credentials — but they are CLOCK-HOUR certificates (HIM0xxx), and a certificate makes nobody RHIT-eligible. ⚠ Coding is a job you can hold with a certificate; health information management is a department you can run with the degree.

Medical Office Administration 36 Florida schools

⚠ The third route in the same family and the most often mistaken for this one. Medical secretaries and administrative assistants schedule, register, verify insurance and manage the front office; health information staff own the record itself. ⚠⚠ 850,000 people work in the front-office occupation against 194,800 in medical records, so it is the larger job market — but it pays less and has no credential ladder.

Medical Assisting 38 Florida schools

⚠ A neighbouring certificate at many of the same institutions, and the comparison worth making if you are deciding between a clinical and an administrative route. Medical assisting has a clinical half — venipuncture, injections, vital signs — that this does not. ⚠ If the idea of drawing blood is the deciding factor, that is a legitimate way to choose between them.

Nursing 78 Florida schools

⚠ Not a route, and named for a specific reason: health information departments hire experienced clinicians into clinical documentation improvement and coding audit roles, where knowing what a chart MEANS is worth more than speed. ⚠⚠ It is one of the few desk-based second careers a nurse can move into without starting over, and nobody advertises it.

Health Care Administration 24 Florida schools

⚠⚠ The adjacent degree, and students mix them up constantly. Health information management owns the RECORD and leads to the RHIT and RHIA credentials; health care administration runs the ORGANISATION and leads to no credential at all except in nursing homes. ⚠ HIM is the more credentialed route and the smaller job; administration is the larger job and the bigger salary.

Public Health 14 Florida schools

⚠ Named because both fields live on health DATA and students confuse the two. Health information management owns the individual record and codes it; public health aggregates populations and asks what the data means. ⚠⚠ HIM has a credential ladder (RHIT, RHIA) reachable with an associate degree; public health's serious credentials are graduate.

Florida public institutions offering this program

31 institutions awarded a credential in this field in 2023, at these levels: Associate, Bachelor's, Certificate (1-2 years), Certificate (12 weeks-1 year), Master's. A school appears here if it awards anything in the field, however limited its offering — a technical college teaching only practical nursing has a nursing program. Listed alphabetically, not ranked.

Atlantic Technical College

Certificate (1-2 years)

Broward College

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years) · Certificate (12 weeks-1 year)

College of Central Florida

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years)

Daytona State College

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years)

Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University

Bachelor's

Florida Atlantic University

Certificate (12 weeks-1 year)

Florida Gateway College

Associate

Florida Panhandle Technical College

Certificate (1-2 years)

Florida SouthWestern State College

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years)

Florida State College at Jacksonville

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years) · Certificate (12 weeks-1 year)

Hillsborough Community College

Certificate (1-2 years)

Indian River State College

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years) · Certificate (12 weeks-1 year)

Lake-Sumter State College

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years) · Certificate (12 weeks-1 year)

Manatee Technical College

Certificate (1-2 years)

Marion Technical College

Certificate (1-2 years)

Miami Dade College

Associate · Certificate (12 weeks-1 year)

North Florida College

Certificate (1-2 years)

Northwest Florida State College

Certificate (1-2 years)

Palm Beach State College

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years) · Certificate (12 weeks-1 year)

Pasco-Hernando State College

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years)

Pensacola State College

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years) · Certificate (12 weeks-1 year)

Polk State College

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years)

Saint Johns River State College

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years)

Santa Fe College

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years) · Certificate (12 weeks-1 year)

Seminole State College of Florida

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years)

Sheridan Technical College

Certificate (1-2 years)

South Florida State College

Certificate (1-2 years)

St Petersburg College

Associate · Certificate (12 weeks-1 year)

Tallahassee Community College

Associate · Certificate (12 weeks-1 year)

University of Central Florida

Bachelor's · Master's

Valencia College

Associate · Certificate (1-2 years)

Source: federal IPEDS completions data for 2023, first majors only — the most recent year published. ⚠ It records what was awarded, which is strong evidence of what is offered, but a program launched since 2023 will not appear here. Check the institution’s own catalog before applying.

Updated 22 September 2026. ⚠ Program pages describe a field of study, not one school’s degree — always read the catalog of the institution you are applying to.