The front office of a medical practice — scheduling, registration, insurance verification, referrals, correspondence, and the patient's first and last five minutes. ⚠⚠ The occupation it leads to is enormous: 850,000 medical secretaries and administrative assistants nationally, with 85,900 openings a year, more than four times the whole medical-records occupation. Taught at 36 Florida public institutions.
The degrees this program covers
⚠⚠ THE JOB MARKET IS LARGE AND THE CREDENTIAL MARKET IS NOT. Florida awards only 242 credentials a year across these codes — 80 under medical administrative assistant, 91 under medical office management, 57 under medical office assistant and 14 under facilities administration — into an occupation with 85,900 annual openings nationally. ⚠⚠⚠ The arithmetic says most people are hired into this work without the certificate, and O*NET's own figures agree: 48% enter with a high school diploma. ⚠ Read that honestly in both directions. You can get in without paying for a programme — and the programme is therefore something you should only buy if it gives you something the job will not, which usually means medical terminology, insurance verification and the electronic health record. ⚠⚠ THE CEILING IS THE PROBLEM, NOT THE ENTRY. This route has no credential ladder: there is no state licence, no national registry that employers filter on, and no accredited degree above it in the same subject. ⚠⚠⚠ So if you want somewhere to go afterwards, the move is sideways into HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT, where the associate degree makes you RHIT-eligible, or into BILLING AND CODING, where the CPC does. ⚠ Ask any programme what its graduates did next, and treat a vague answer as the answer.
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.
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.
36 institutions awarded a credential in this field in 2023,
at these levels: Associate, Certificate (1-2 years), Certificate (12 weeks-1 year), Certificate (2-4 years).
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.
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.