A Medical Economics Job Description

Medical economics analysts provide an integral health care industry function.

Medical economics analysts, or medical economists, specialize in health care information analysis. They prepare reports and anticipate trends. Medical economics analysts work for health care providers, economic organizations and the U.S. government.

Job Requirements

Medical economics analysts have rigorous educational requirements.

Aspiring medical economics analysts who plan to work for the U.S. government must have a bachelor's degree with at least 21 semester hours of economics courses and three credit hours of statistics, accounting or calculus. Medical economics analysts must have a master's or doctoral degree in economics for private-sector jobs.

Duties

Medical economics analysts study past data to anticipate future trends.

Medical economics analysts provide comprehensive analysis of health care data to interpret results and project future trends. They summarize statistical information and create reports to document their findings. Medical economics analysts understand data warehousing techniques and have experience with relational databases.

Key Traits

Medical economics analysts must be excellent communicators.

Successful medical economics analysts must have excellent communication skills in written and spoken form. They must have keen analytical, documentation, project management and organizational abilities. Medical economics analysts must be able to handle stressful and demanding work environments.

Compensation

The BLS reported a mean annual wage of $96,320 in 2009 for medical economics analysts.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, economists earned an average hourly wage of $46.31 and an average annual salary of $96,320, as of May 2009. Salaries ranged from a low of $44,720 to a high of $153,210.

References

• Bureau of Labor Statistics: Economist Overview
• Bureau of Labor Statistics: Economists Wages

Resources

• National Association of Business Economics