What a medical records specialist costs in the US
The wage BLS measured across 194,720 jobs, what an employer pays on top of it, the pay in every state, and which of the job's core tasks already show up in AI use.
Medians for the whole US. Your own cost depends on where you hire, the benefits you offer and the hours worked.
- Median wage
- $51,140
- Hourly wage
- $24.59
- Loaded per hour
- $30.63
- Middle half earns
- $43,490 to $64,820
- Jobs in the US
- 194,720
Wage × 1.2455 for benefits and payroll taxes, from BLS.
A medical records specialist in the US is paid a median $51,140 a year, $24.59 an hour, across 194,720 jobs. With benefits, a small employer pays about $63,690. None of its 8 core tasks had enough Claude.ai conversations in May 2026 for Anthropic to publish.
The work, task by task
The 8 core tasks O*NET lists for medical records specialists, most important first, and how each showed up in Claude.ai conversations in May 2026. The bar splits those conversations between Claude doing the task and Claude helping a person do it.
- 01Protect the security of medical records to ensure that confidentiality is maintained.
- 02Review records for completeness, accuracy, and compliance with regulations.
- 03Scan patients' health records into electronic formats.
- 04Release information to persons or agencies according to regulations.
- 05Enter data, such as demographic characteristics, history and extent of disease, diagnostic procedures, or treatment into computer.API: 100% did the task, 0% helped
- 06Maintain or operate a variety of health record indexes or storage and retrieval systems to collect, classify, store, or analyze information.
- 07Process patient admission or discharge documents.
- 08Retrieve patient medical records for physicians, technicians, or other medical personnel.
0 of 8 tasks appear in the Claude.ai sample of the Anthropic Economic Index for May 2026, and 1 more only in its sample of API traffic, where businesses run Claude inside their own software. A task without a row had too few conversations for Anthropic to publish, which is not the same as none. Shares are of all sampled Claude.ai conversations, so small figures are normal: under 0.01% of every conversation that month was about this occupation.
Pay by state
The median annual wage in each state and DC, and the same wage fully loaded. District of Columbia pays the most, $72,040; Mississippi the least, $41,500.
| State | Median wage | Fully loaded | Middle half | Jobs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | $43,810 | $54,570 | $36,160 to $52,040 | 2,330 |
| Alaska | $61,090 | $76,090 | $51,050 to $72,800 | 1,070 |
| Arizona | $47,630 | $59,320 | $40,150 to $61,350 | 3,750 |
| Arkansas | $41,740 | $51,990 | $36,550 to $51,440 | 1,920 |
| California | $61,810 | $76,980 | $49,000 to $80,630 | 18,700 |
| Colorado | $59,020 | $73,510 | $49,280 to $68,140 | 1,780 |
| Connecticut | $60,940 | $75,900 | $48,750 to $76,160 | 1,120 |
| Delaware | $56,060 | $69,820 | $42,690 to $67,160 | 610 |
| District of Columbia | $72,040 | $89,730 | $55,750 to $99,060 | 270 |
| Florida | $45,760 | $56,990 | $37,390 to $59,230 | 21,490 |
| Georgia | $51,550 | $64,210 | $43,810 to $64,840 | 5,930 |
| Hawaii | $63,180 | $78,690 | $50,670 to $77,970 | 400 |
| Idaho | $53,460 | $66,580 | $46,450 to $64,470 | 1,490 |
| Illinois | $56,440 | $70,300 | $46,290 to $64,360 | 5,740 |
| Indiana | $47,670 | $59,370 | $40,060 to $60,820 | 5,860 |
| Iowa | $50,640 | $63,070 | $44,500 to $61,920 | 2,250 |
| Kansas | $48,160 | $59,980 | $40,860 to $59,130 | 2,030 |
| Kentucky | $48,410 | $60,290 | $40,570 to $61,720 | 4,210 |
| Louisiana | $44,610 | $55,560 | $36,830 to $61,150 | 2,600 |
| Maine | $52,090 | $64,880 | $46,330 to $61,790 | 1,000 |
| Maryland | $54,220 | $67,530 | $44,210 to $65,770 | 2,440 |
| Massachusetts | $60,350 | $75,170 | $48,170 to $74,700 | 3,500 |
| Michigan | $48,120 | $59,930 | $41,370 to $61,470 | 4,890 |
| Minnesota | $61,530 | $76,640 | $49,690 to $70,070 | 3,150 |
| Mississippi | $41,500 | $51,690 | $34,730 to $50,500 | 2,310 |
| Missouri | $50,750 | $63,210 | $46,000 to $63,150 | 3,890 |
| Montana | $50,190 | $62,510 | $43,970 to $59,770 | 820 |
| Nebraska | $51,670 | $64,350 | $44,610 to $62,960 | 1,640 |
| Nevada | $50,300 | $62,650 | $40,370 to $65,160 | 2,350 |
| New Hampshire | $49,210 | $61,290 | $44,090 to $61,050 | 930 |
| New Jersey | $50,240 | $62,570 | $35,640 to $64,700 | 4,450 |
| New Mexico | $57,470 | $71,580 | $43,470 to $66,240 | 1,400 |
| New York | $61,720 | $76,870 | $49,010 to $79,120 | 9,080 |
| North Carolina | $49,620 | $61,800 | $41,490 to $64,800 | 6,760 |
| North Dakota | $46,280 | $57,640 | $40,330 to $60,860 | 520 |
| Ohio | $50,990 | $63,510 | $45,500 to $63,510 | 7,440 |
| Oklahoma | $53,460 | $66,580 | $41,200 to $61,110 | 2,480 |
| Oregon | $59,000 | $73,480 | $49,180 to $70,610 | 2,560 |
| Pennsylvania | $46,840 | $58,340 | $42,690 to $60,510 | 6,970 |
| Rhode Island | $63,960 | $79,660 | $51,040 to $70,910 | 650 |
| South Carolina | $54,280 | $67,610 | $45,180 to $62,650 | 2,750 |
| South Dakota | $51,610 | $64,280 | $44,860 to $63,130 | 900 |
| Tennessee | $48,780 | $60,760 | $40,840 to $62,930 | 4,440 |
| Texas | $48,860 | $60,860 | $39,470 to $63,970 | 17,210 |
| Utah | $52,870 | $65,850 | $42,040 to $65,360 | 1,910 |
| Vermont | $57,560 | $71,690 | $47,340 to $62,590 | · |
| Virginia | $53,290 | $66,370 | $45,200 to $64,950 | 4,630 |
| Washington | $62,270 | $77,560 | $50,250 to $79,680 | 5,010 |
| West Virginia | $47,360 | $58,990 | $38,090 to $59,950 | 1,260 |
| Wisconsin | $60,280 | $75,080 | $49,510 to $66,140 | 2,870 |
| Wyoming | $54,210 | $67,520 | $42,770 to $65,800 | 280 |
The same benefits ratio applies in every state, because BLS does not publish benefit costs by business size for each state. The middle half is the 25th to 75th percentile wage.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure is copied from a public file. The only arithmetic is the loaded cost: the wage times 1.2455.
- Wages
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, occupation 29-2072 (Medical Records Specialists). Annual figures are the hourly wage times 2,080 hours, as BLS computes them, so they already include pay for paid leave.
- Fully loaded
- BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (2026 Q2), private businesses with 1 to 49 workers: $37.64 an hour in total compensation over $27.88 in wages plus $2.34 in paid leave gives 1.2455. Paid leave sits in the denominator because the annual wage already pays it.
- Tasks
- O*NET 31.0 core tasks for 29-2072.00, the ten most important by their importance rating. A few occupations list fewer core tasks.
- AI use
- Anthropic Economic Index, release of June 2026, conversations from May 2026. "Did the task" is Anthropic's automation share, where the user directs Claude to do the work; "helped" is augmentation, where the user works with Claude to learn, check or iterate.
- Not measured
- What a particular business pays, and whether an AI system can do a task well. The AI figures count conversations about a task, not jobs replaced.
This page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. AI use data from the Anthropic Economic Index by Anthropic, under CC BY. Wage and benefit data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
What would an AI system cost for this work?
Put $63,690 beside the running cost of a system doing the tasks above, with the build counted in year one.
BLS wages May 2025 · O*NET 31.0 · Anthropic Economic Index