Originally Posted by bjmarthin1986
if you had to estimate what would you say?
If you work for a company such as mckesson, cerner, epic...
starting salaries will start at around 57,000; however, you can negotiate from there. Cerner is known to pay the least.
With no experience---meaning no previous implementations---that might be your starting salary. Hospitals vary their pay based on their location; I can personally tell you that a hospital offered me a job in the low 50's; I later found out that their max salary was in the low 60's, or i should say their cap. This was a job for a hospital in the austin, texas area.
If you have experience and go to a consulting company---like Perot, or many of the other ones out there, your minimum salary will be in the high 70's all the way to the high 90's. And of course, varies by region. I'm sure if you worked in ny or boston salaries would be higher. I just know the ones in the midwest and south as I work over that area. Also, when I interview for a position in Boston 2 years ago, their starting offer started in the mid 80's. By the way, at that time I had 5 years of med surg nursing, 2 years of IT, 0 years of 'informatics' experience.
Now, there are the perks of working for the big companies cause you get to travel; surely as a nurse working on the floors I could have made more money cause of the overtime worked, but then again, I would have been using that money on full body massages. Now, I have a decent paying job, and i have collected so many air miles and hotel points that recently, I vacationed in scotland and belgium for free---all expenses were paid by my points, except for food of course

cheers!