Medical Coder Salary in Georgia 2026,
$51,550 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Georgia figure is $51,550 a year, or $24.78 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 0.8% above the national median of $51,140, so Georgia is essentially level with the country here. The row is SOC 29-2072, Medical Records Specialists, which covers health information and records staff as well as coders. The band runs $36,260 at the 10th percentile to $81,580 at the 90th.

Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell at $58,950, then Hinesville $55,880, Augusta-Richmond County $53,830, Columbus $52,580 and Rome $51,400. Hinesville placing second is the notable result — it is a small city built around Fort Stewart, and military treatment facilities and their contractors pay on federal scales rather than local ones.

The state requires nothing — Georgia does not license or register this occupation, and neither does any other state. Employers, however, treat certification as effectively mandatory: AHIMA's RHIT and CCS credentials and AAPC's CPC are what Georgia hospitals, physician groups and payers screen on. The accountability framework for the work is federal, running through HIPAA privacy and security rules and the coding and documentation requirements attached to Medicare and Medicaid billing.

This is one of the most remote-friendly roles in healthcare, and a large share of Georgia coders work from home, frequently for employers based elsewhere. Two practical points follow. Employers still verify credentials and production quality, so certification matters more rather than less in a remote hiring process. And state income tax generally follows residence, so a Georgia-resident coder working for an out-of-state employer pays Georgia's flat rate — the out-of-state salary does not bring out-of-state tax treatment with it.

It is reshaping the occupation rather than removing it, and the national projection of 7.1% growth reflects that. Computer-assisted coding handles routine outpatient assignment increasingly well, which compresses the entry tier around the $43,810 twenty-fifth percentile. What has not been automated is judgement work: complex inpatient DRG assignment, specialty surgical coding, clinical documentation improvement, risk adjustment and audit response. Those occupy the $64,840 seventy-fifth percentile and $81,580 ninetieth, and demand for them has grown.

Because military treatment facilities and the contractors serving them are federal employers, and federal health information roles are paid on national schedules with locality adjustments rather than on local market rates. In a small Georgia city like Hinesville, where the surrounding economy would support considerably lower wages, that produces a metro figure of $55,880 — second only to Atlanta. The same mechanism explains Augusta-Richmond County at $53,830 and Columbus at $52,580, both installation cities, appearing above Rome.

Category breadth. Medical Records Specialists covers release-of-information clerks, health information technicians, analysts and coders across every level of certification, and a single median across that mix describes none of them well. Remote work adds a second complication: an increasing share of Georgia coders work for out-of-state employers, and how such positions are geographically assigned in a wage survey is not always intuitive. Production and incentive pay, common in outpatient coding, is a third element blended in without being visible.

Credential and coding type first: moving from outpatient CPC work to inpatient DRG coding with a CCS or RHIT is most of the distance from the $43,810 twenty-fifth percentile to the $64,840 seventy-fifth. Then specialty — surgical, cardiology and oncology coding are more demanding and better paid than general outpatient work. Then the shift into audit, risk adjustment and clinical documentation improvement, which are advisory rather than production roles and sit at the top of the band. And then employer type, with federal facilities and payers generally above community providers.