Medical assistant jobs in Rhode Island

Think of the median as the midpoint: some medical assistants earn more and others earn less. Rhode Island's figure is $47,190 per year, or $22.69 per hour, which places the state 18th of 51 for pay. Nationally, the median is $45,690.

Earnings across the state fall within a fairly tight range. Half of medical assistants make somewhere between $45,370 and $48,630. The bottom tenth earn $39,280 or under, while the top tenth earn $56,840 or above.

Here is how national median pay looks when you compare medical assistant work with other ways into health care.

Roughly 3,210 people in Rhode Island work as medical assistants, which works out to 6.4 for every 1,000 jobs statewide. That puts Rhode Island 41st of 51 for the number of medical assistant jobs. The Providence-Warwick metro area reaches into Massachusetts and holds about 4,120 medical assistant positions.

The state's labor agency projects about 440 openings each year. This number covers newly created jobs as well as positions left behind when workers leave, and it puts Rhode Island 42nd of 51.

Job growth is slow. Employment should grow from 3,380 positions in 2024 to 3,630 in 2034, an increase of 7.3%. The US figure is 12.5%. Rhode Island ranks 50th of 51 for growth.

Not in Rhode Island. The state does not credential medical assistants. No state law names them either. What you can do on the job still depends on a few state rules.

Nurses in Rhode Island can hand tasks to unlicensed assistive personnel only when the patient is stable and the worker has shown they can do the task well. According to hospital rules, only licensed professionals may administer medication. Performing x-rays requires a state radiologic technologist license. Medical assistants are not exempt from that rule.

One Rhode Island school on this site sends its medical assistant graduate counts to the federal survey of colleges. No program listed in the state is accredited. Accreditation comes from an outside organization, either CAAHEP or ABHES, which reviews a program against established standards.

Across the country, 1,094 programs appear on this site; 484 of them are accredited. Among career schools that report this information, the median program runs 9 months, with most lasting 7 to 9 months. At career schools with published pricing, the median cost for the entire program is $17,257. At a public college, the median in-district price for one full-time academic year is $4,346.

Online programs deliver classes through distance education, but the externship, where you gain supervised experience in an actual clinic, always takes place in person. Thirty programs can be finished this way, and 14 of those are accredited.

Want to start an accredited program? Visit our online programs page, choose one program, and use the short Request information form after the program tables to ask that school about costs and start dates.