Health information management pay

Health information manager salary in Australia

The starting health information manager salary in Australia is $108,091 a year in Queensland public health under Queensland Health’s professional stream wage rates, from 1 September 2026, against $103,222 for an entry clinical coder under the same agreement. In New South Wales, the Health Professional Salaries (State) Award lists a first-year Medical Records Administrator at $76,450 from 1 July 2026, against a recommended trainee clinical coder rate of $73,662 under the Health Employees’ Administrative Staff (State) Award; that title is the closest NSW award match to health information manager, though only by inference. Both award gaps are small: about 5% in Queensland and about 2% to 4% in New South Wales.

The numbers below come from state award and enterprise agreement tables, government careers and position-description pages, Jobs and Skills Australia earnings data and SEEK’s advertised averages, all read on 10 October 2026. Award tables are the strongest evidence because they state pay points for both roles, though Queensland is the only state found to publish both in one instrument.

Public award tables put the entry health information manager salary a little above the entry clinical coder in the two states that publish comparable figures, and senior coder grades overlap some manager grades in Queensland. The Queensland figures come from Queensland Health’s professional stream and clinical coders stream wage-rate pages, both dated 1 September 2026 and both drawn from schedule 1 of the Queensland Public Health Sector Certified Agreement (No. 12) 2025. The New South Wales figures come from the Health Professional Salaries (State) Award and the Health Employees’ Administrative Staff (State) Award, both dated 1 July 2026. SEEK’s advertised averages, refreshed 1 October 2026, sit at $95,000 to $110,000 for health information managers and $75,000 to $95,000 for clinical coders, and they are built from the salary ranges employers disclose in job ads rather than from award entitlements.

If you are still choosing between the two careers, the health information management pillar covers both roles in full, and our clinical coder salary page covers coder pay on its own.

Queensland is the only state found to set pay points for both roles in one published instrument: Queensland Health’s clinical coders stream and professional stream wage tables both take their rates from schedule 1 of the Queensland Public Health Sector Certified Agreement (No. 12) 2025. A new coder starts at grade 2, pay point 1 (CC2.1), and a new health information manager starts in the professional stream at grade 3, pay point 1 (PO3.1), as Queensland Health’s coder and manager career pathways pages (July 2026) describe. All rates are annual, effective 1 September 2026.

Entry comes with a $4,869 a year gap, about 5%, in the manager’s favour. Overlap shows up in the same tables: a coder at the top of grade 2 (CC2.4, $112,674) earns more than an entry manager at PO3.1, every grade 3 coder pay point ($118,299 and above) sits above the top of PO3 ($117,991), and the top coder points at grade 4 ($143,314) and grade 5 ($159,682) exceed the tops of PO4 ($135,291) and PO5 ($151,660). Senior coder pay can overlap or exceed some HIM pay points in Queensland Health.

NSW Health has no award classification titled “Health Information Manager”. Nearest in title is Medical Records Administrator under the Health Professional Salaries (State) Award, and treating that as the NSW stand-in for a health information manager is an inference this page flags openly rather than something the award says. Clinical coders in New South Wales work to recommended grades set out in a 2019 NSW Health information bulletin (IB2019_021, still active): a trainee clinical coder is recommended at Administration Officer Level 3, a clinical coder with a minimum of 12 months’ experience at Level 4, and a senior clinical coder at Level 5, with payment at the recommended level left to each district’s discretion.

The coder figures are annual conversions of the Administrative Staff award weekly rates from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026: $1,416.58, $1,498.39 and $1,578.00 a week, multiplied by 52. On those like-for-like pairings the manager stand-in earns $2,788 a year (about 3.8%) more than a trainee coder with no experience, and $1,483 (about 1.9%) more at about 12 months. A senior coder on Level 5 Year 1 ($82,056) sits above the Medical Records Administrator’s first two years, though that pairing sets a senior coder against a first or second year Medical Records Administrator rather than matching them by experience.

A coder’s grade depends on each district following the recommendation, so two coders with identical experience can be paid differently in different districts. And because the manager stand-in is an inferred classification, the NSW comparison is the loosest on this page and reads best alongside Queensland’s.

Victoria classifies health information managers, listed as Medical Records Administrators, within the Allied Health Professional 1 group in the Allied Health Professionals (Victorian Public Sector) (Single Interest Employers) Enterprise Agreement 2021-2026. HIM Grade 1, Year 1 is $1,357.50 a week from 1 March 2025, the last scheduled rise in that agreement. What the agreement cannot show is a coder comparison: it contains no clinical coder classification, so no Victorian coder rates can be placed beside the manager rates. That makes Victoria the one state on this page where the coder side of the comparison is missing outright rather than partial.

Victorian rates are the oldest on this page: the agreement’s scheduled rises stop at 1 March 2025, and no successor agreement had been found when this page was checked, so any figure older than the other states’ tables needs that context when you quote it. And one Victorian employer blurs the line anyway: Goulburn Valley Health classified a combined “Health Information Manager / Clinical Coder” role at HIM Grade 1 in an April 2026 position description, so at that employer the two roles share one classification and one pay scale.

SEEK publishes advertised averages built from the salary ranges employers disclose in job ads. As at 1 October 2026, the advertised average for health information manager jobs in Australia is $95,000 to $110,000, while the clinical coder advertised average is $75,000 to $95,000. These are advertised figures, not award entitlements, and they are assembled on a different basis from the award pay points earlier on this page, so quote them with their snapshot date rather than as an entitlement.

The two ranges touch at exactly one point: the bottom of the manager range, $95,000, is the top of the coder range. Across the full ranges, the manager band sits $15,000 to $20,000 above the coder band. Because the ranges come from disclosed ad ranges rather than from agreements, this page reports them alongside the award tables rather than instead of them.

Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) publishes no median earnings for Health Information Manager or Clinical Coder as occupations. Its figures for wider unit groups, drawn from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours, May 2025, are: unit group 2242, Archivists, Curators and Records Managers, with median full-time earnings of $2,279 a week and health information managers making up about 2,000 of its 9,800 workers, and unit group 5999, Other Miscellaneous Clerical and Administrative Workers, with median full-time earnings of $1,590 a week and clinical coders about 1,600 of its 24,600 workers.

That $689 a week (43.3%) difference therefore compares the two unit groups, not the two occupations, because health information managers are about a fifth of unit group 2242 and clinical coders about a fifteenth of unit group 5999. Quoting it as an HIM pay advantage over coders would misstate what JSA measured. State award tables, which name both roles inside the same or directly comparable instruments, are the like-for-like comparison, and they show a far smaller gap.

Experience, grade and role type move pay up in both careers.

• Experience and grade. Queensland’s professional stream runs from $108,091 (PO3.1) to the top of PO5 at $151,660, and New South Wales runs its Medical Records Administrator scale from $76,450 in year 1 to $98,886 in year 7 and thereafter.
• Senior coding roles. The Clinical Coders’ Society of Australia (CCSA) describes advanced or senior clinical coder duties in its practice standards, including educating, auditing and managing a team of clinical coders. A Canberra Health Services position description describes a Clinical Coder Educator/Auditor role at Clinical Coder Level 2 requiring at least 3 years’ recent tertiary hospital coding experience and, in the same document, health information management tertiary qualifications or their equivalent. Our clinical coder career progression guide follows those steps.
• Entry pathways into the coding workforce. Queensland Health lists clinical and medical coders, educators and auditors in its health information management workforce and names the Diploma of Clinical Coding as an entry qualification. TalentMed (RTO 22151) delivers that qualification as the HLT50321 Diploma of Clinical Coding, 12 months, self-paced, 100% online, with daily intakes, and it prepares you for entry coding roles from which pay can progress through the grades above.

In Queensland Health’s structure, the manager path needs a university degree up front, while the coder path can start from vocational training and build seniority through grades 2 to 5. How to become a health information manager sets out the study options, and our health information management versus clinical coding comparison covers what each route involves.