Health information careers

Health information manager jobs in Australia: roles, employers and how to qualify

Health information manager jobs in Australia: the published position descriptions and award tables all come from state and territory health services. A health information manager (HIM) runs the systems that turn hospital care into coded, reportable data, and manages the teams that do that work. This page covers the roles that exist, how many vacancies are advertised, what employers ask for, the pay and the entry routes, including clinical coding as an entry point into the workforce and as a career in its own right.

If you are weighing HIM against clinical coding as a career, our overview of health information management gives you the big picture first.

These jobs sit under one official occupation, Health Information Manager, which Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) profiles as OSCA code 223933, and they span health information units, coding teams, education and audit.

How big is the HIM workforce

It is small: JSA’s profile, built on 2021 Census data, puts the occupation at about 2,400 workers, 75.7% of them working full time. It is also a strongly female-dominated field: 78.3% of Health Information Managers are women, and the median age is 45. JSA’s ANZSCO Occupation data, February 2026 (2021 Census) shows the education profile you would expect from the degree requirement employers publish: 49.5% of people in the occupation hold a bachelor degree and a further 30.6% hold a postgraduate qualification.

Who employs health information managers

Public health services: that is what the published position descriptions and award tables show. Queensland Health’s careers site (July 2026) describes health information management as a workforce that includes clinical and medical coders, educators and auditors alongside HIMs. Canberra Health Services runs a Clinical Coder Educator/Auditor role in its Health Information Services unit that reports to a Clinical Coding Manager. Goulburn Valley Health, in regional Victoria, classifies a combined Health Information Manager and Clinical Coder position at Grade 1, so one job covers both sets of duties.

Titles vary between states. On its careers pathway page, Queensland Health treats health information manager as a professional stream role that starts at grade 3, pay point 1. NSW awards carry no Health Information Manager title at all; the closest award classification there is Medical Records Administrator, and reading it as the NSW equivalent of the HIM role is an inference, not a published mapping.

Practice standards from the Clinical Coders’ Society of Australia (CCSA) also describe advanced or senior coder duties that include educating, auditing and managing a team of clinical coders.

SEEK’s quoted-keyword search gives the clearest dated snapshot: it returned 8 jobs for “health information manager” across Australia at 09:45 AEDT on 10 October 2026, and only 4 of those 8 job titles were actually HIM roles.

Treat the 8 as an upper bound rather than a count of real vacancies, because keyword counts overstate the number of actual roles: two of the eight ads were titled Clinical Coder, so they belong to the coding side of the workforce even though the phrase matched. A matching search for “clinical coder” returned 24 jobs in the same snapshot.

On direction of travel, JSA’s employment projections put the broader unit group that contains HIMs, Archivists, Curators and Records Managers, at about 10,200 workers in May 2025, growing to about 13,200 by May 2035, a rise of 17.3% by 2030 and 29.1% by 2035. Keep the grouping in mind when you read that: HIMs are only about 2,000 of the group’s workers on JSA’s profile of unit group 2242, a different measure from the projections, so read the projection as being about the wider records and curatorial workforce as much as about HIM jobs.

The published requirements, on Queensland Health’s careers pages and in hospital position descriptions, ask for a university degree and, in the coding-adjacent roles, hands-on hospital coding experience.

What qualifications do health information manager employers ask for

A university degree: that is how Queensland Health’s careers site puts it, and JSA rates the occupation’s skill level as equivalent to a university qualification, a bachelor degree or higher. People already holding the jobs match that requirement, as the Census figures above show.

What experience do health information manager employers ask for

Hands-on hospital coding experience, for the coding-adjacent roles. Canberra Health Services’ Clinical Coder Educator/Auditor position asks for at least 3 years’ recent tertiary hospital coding experience, plus HIM tertiary qualifications or equivalent. Goulburn Valley Health’s combined Grade 1 position asks one person to carry both the coding and the HIM duties.

Which HIM degrees can you still study

For 2027 entry, only two remain open to new students among the universities checked, both at La Trobe University: its Bachelor of Health Information Management and its Master of Health Information Management. We walk through the whole pathway on our how to become a health information manager page, and compare the open degrees on our Australian HIM degrees page.

Clinical coding is an entry point into the health information management workforce, and it is also a career in its own right: Queensland Health includes clinical coders in that workforce. A titled HIM role, though, still asks for a university degree, as Queensland Health’s careers page states.

Are clinical coder jobs in shortage

Yes: JSA’s 2025 Occupation Shortage List has Clinical Coder in shortage nationally and in every state and territory, while Health Information Manager is not listed as in shortage. JSA’s shortage list page shows the 2025 list was still the latest published as at 10 October 2026.

How many clinical coder jobs are there

SEEK’s 10 October 2026 snapshot returned 24 “clinical coder” jobs nationally in the same morning’s search. Treat that the same way as the HIM count: it is a single-morning keyword result, and keyword counts overstate the number of actual roles. JSA profiles the coder occupation separately, as OSCA code 599931, and rates its skill level at mid-level vocational education and training, a Certificate IV or a Certificate III with at least 2 years of on-the-job training. JSA’s ANZSCO Occupation data, February 2026 (2021 Census) records 17.1% of clinical coders with an advanced diploma or diploma and a further 17.3% with a Certificate III or IV. JSA projects the coder-containing unit group to grow 4.1% to May 2030 and 10.6% to May 2035, slower than the HIM-containing group but from a much larger base: JSA’s profile of unit group 5999 counts about 1,600 clinical coders among the group’s roughly 24,600 workers. As with the HIM projection, that figure covers the wider clerical and administrative unit group, so it says little about coder jobs specifically.

Can clinical coding lead to a health information manager job

Not by a published path: Queensland Health does not publish a progression route from coder to HIM. TalentMed (RTO 22151) delivers the HLT50321 Diploma of Clinical Coding: 12 months, self-paced, 100% online, with daily intakes, and it prepares you for entry-level coding roles. Queensland Health does, however, name the Diploma of Clinical Coding as an entry qualification for its health information management workforce, the workforce described earlier that includes coders, educators and auditors. To see what coder vacancies look like day to day, read our page on clinical coder jobs in Australia, and our clinical coder career progression page for how the coding ladder climbs. If you are still choosing between the two careers, our HIM versus clinical coding page sets the roles side by side.

SEEK’s advertised salary figures for October 2026 put the average for health information manager jobs at $95,000 to $110,000 a year.

Award tables back a similar story at entry. Queensland Health’s entry HIM pay point, PO3.1, is $108,091 a year from 1 September 2026, about 5% above the entry clinical coder pay point, and the PO3 band runs to $117,991. Comparing the closest NSW award titles by experience on the 1 July 2026 rates, the HIM-side rate runs about 2% to 4% higher. In Queensland Health, senior coder pay overlaps and in places exceeds HIM pay points: a coder at CC2.4 earns more than an entry HIM at PO3.1, and every coder grade 3 pay point sits above the top of the PO3 band. Our health information manager salary page carries the full award comparison, state by state.