The cost of the education offered through the Health Information Exchange (HI-Exchange) program has skyrocketed to $6,854,000 for a degree in health information management (HIM), according to the Department of Education.
That’s more than triple the $2,000 tuition the program offered for the same degree a decade ago.
HI-Exchanges enrollment has grown more than 300% since it was launched in 2004, according to a report by the nonprofit Center for American Progress.
In 2020, enrollment in the program grew more than 40% to nearly 8.4 million students.
The price tag on a degree is also rising.
In 2018, students paying in-state tuition for a bachelor’s degree in the field of health information technology earned an average of $51,711, a 6.9% increase over the previous year, according the report.
HI and the Department Education say enrollment is projected to grow more than 500% to 1.4 billion students in the 2020-2021 school year.
In the coming years, enrollment of the program is expected to grow even faster.
The department expects to increase enrollment by more than 4.5% a year.
But it says the cost of providing an online degree will likely rise to as much as $6 million a year by 2020.
The price tag is set to grow as well as the program’s enrollment by about a third each year.
The new cost of online courses will also drive up enrollment costs for other health information services, the report says.
In 2021, enrollment for health information exchange students will reach nearly $1 billion, up from $900 million in 2020.
By 2021, the cost for other online health information service providers will increase by about $100 million, up $100,000 from the previous estimate.
By 2022, the total cost for the HealthInformation exchange program will increase to about $5.2 billion, the most recent year for which data is available.
That will be more than double the $1.1 billion cost for students paying for their undergraduate education.