r/healthIT: rules, karma requirements and posting culture
A small, working room of Epic analysts, trainers and hospital IT staff. Career talk and EHR shop talk, a 100 comment karma gate, and no patience for vendor posts.
Health Information Technology · Open on Reddit
- Members
- 59k
- Created
- 2010
- New posts a day
- 4
- Comments on a typical post
- 9
- New posts removed
- 28%
The short answer
r/healthIT requires 100 comment karma before you can create a post, and AutoModerator says so in plain words. If you are short, you can message the moderators for approval. About 85% of posts are text, most of them career or workflow questions from people who work on electronic health records, and around 28% of posts in our sample were removed. Posts that exist only to market a product or service are against the rules.
Who posts here
Threads assume you know what an analyst, a build and a go-live are, and Epic module names, HL7, FHIR and PHI are used without explanation. People trying to get into the field are answered helpfully when they bring a real background and a specific question. The generic "how do I break into Epic" post is so common that several were among the removed posts in our sample.
- Epic application analysts, from one year in to director level, comparing roles, modules and employers.
- Trainers and credentialed staff looking to move into analyst work.
- Nurses, techs and other clinical staff planning a move out of patient care into IT.
- Integration, data and revenue cycle people working on interfaces, claims and reporting.
- Developers and founders building for hospitals, asking how things work on the inside.
Karma and account requirements
What it takes to get a post through in r/healthIT.
| Karma | 100 comment karma to create a post. AutoModerator removes posts from accounts below that and tells them to participate more first or ask the mods for approval.Mods' wording: “100 Comment Karma Required.” |
|---|---|
| Account age | Not stated publicly. |
| Link posts | Need a starter comment explaining why the link matters to the community. Without one the post can be removed.Mods' wording: “All link posts require a sufficient starter comment” |
| Sources | If you state facts in a text post, link where they came from.Mods' wording: “you need to include links to your sources” |
| Commercial posts | A post cannot be solely for marketing a product, website or service.Mods' wording: “Original posts should not solely be for the purpose of marketing a commercial product, website or service.” |
| Post flair | Optional. About 40% of posts carry one. Advice is the most common at around 18%, then Epic, Careers and Integrations. |
What AutoModerator says
The moderators' bot leaves these messages on posts. They are the closest thing to an official statement of the thresholds.
100 Comment Karma Required. Please participate more in the community prior to creating your own post or message mods for approval.
What you can post
| Post type | Subreddit setting | Share of recent posts |
|---|---|---|
| Text | Allowed | 85% |
| Link | Allowed | 14% |
| Image | Allowed | 1% |
| Video | Allowed | <1% |
| Poll | Allowed | 0% |
Post flairs in use
- Advice 18%
- Epic 8%
- Careers 7%
- Integrations 6%
- Community 2%
- HIM <1%
What happens to a new post
Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 400.
- Stayed up72%
- Removed by Reddit's filters9%
- Removed by moderators20%
- Deleted by the author<1%
Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.
What happened when we posted here
We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.
- Stayed up
- 95%
- Removed by Reddit's filters
- 3%
- Removed by moderators
- 3%
- Period
- August 2025 to August 2026
The rules, in the mods' words
- 1
Include links in text posts
If you are posting and stating facts in your text, you need to include links to your sources.
- 2
Link posts require a starter comment
All link posts require a sufficient starter comment to explain why the link is of interest to the community and to start the conversation. Posts without starter comments will be temporarily or permanently removed upon discovery.
- 3
No commercial posts
Original posts should not solely be for the purpose of marketing a commercial product, website or service. This is a community for sharing insights into HealthIT by people who work in the industry.
These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.
The culture
r/healthIT has about 59,000 members and around four posts a day, so every post gets read. The median post draws 9 comments, which is high for a room this size. It describes itself as a community for people who work in the industry, and it reads that way: the default poster is an analyst or trainer at a hospital system.
Epic dominates. It is the most used word in the sample by a wide margin, and a large share of threads are about Epic careers: which certification leads where, whether one billing module helps you get hired for another, how to move from trainer to analyst, what to search for on job boards. Nearly half of titles are questions. The rest is practical shop talk about integrations, claims workflows, patient portals and sharing records securely.
Two arguments run through the comments. One is passion versus paycheck: some regulars say the work matters and people who do not care are a risk, others say it is a job that pays the bills. The other is AI in clinical systems. News of an AI assistant connecting to the EHR was one of the most discussed posts, and questions about masking patient data before it reaches a model get serious answers. Vendor write-ups on the same subject tend to get removed.
What lands
- An honest career story from inside the job. The top recent post was someone who landed an analyst role, was not sure they liked it, and asked whether anyone had gone back. It drew 120 comments.
- A question aimed at working analysts that is easy to answer from experience, such as which few skills they use most day to day.
- Industry news with a quoted summary in the post body so the discussion can start without clicking through.
- A concrete operational problem: sending a very large chart to an insurer, automating bulk data entry, what to get in writing about a data export before switching systems.
- A design question about automation in a healthcare setting that has no product attached, like how a voice system should handle two people on one call.
What gets removed or ignored
- Posts from accounts under 100 comment karma. This was AutoModerator's only message in the sample and it appeared constantly.
- Generic break-in and career-path posts, including the same job search post submitted four times under different flairs.
- Surveys and research requests dressed as questions.
- Vendor content: a roundup of compliant storage providers, a field report from a voice AI company, a post about e-signatures.
- Job listings and recruiting posts, though one hiring link did stay up.
The unwritten rules
- State your role, module and years in. Regulars calibrate advice to that, and a post without it gets asked.
- Search before asking how to get into Epic. Posters who acknowledge the question has been asked and say what they already read get better replies.
- Expect blunt, sometimes salty answers. Comments run about 33 words and people say what they think about employers, pay and each other.
- Links in comments are almost nonexistent, under 1%. A link to your own product in a reply will be the only link in the thread.
- This is a staff room, not a patient help desk. Patient questions about portals appear now and then and get answered, but from the IT side.
Self-promotion
The rule says original posts should not be solely for marketing a commercial product, website or service, and describes the subreddit as a place for people who work in the industry to share insight. In practice moderators removed about one in five posts in our sample, and vendor-flavoured posts were well represented among them, even when written as lessons learned. What survives is a workflow write-up or a design question that would stand on its own with no company behind it. The 100 comment karma gate also means a fresh brand account cannot post at all without asking the mods first.
How people write here
- Typical post length
- 92 words
- Typical title length
- 8 words
- Titles phrased as a question
- 47%
- Typical comment length
- 32 words
- Comments that include a link
- 1%
- Posts that carry a flair
- 40%
When people post
- 0:00 UTC, 17
- 1:00 UTC, 9
- 2:00 UTC, 13
- 3:00 UTC, 14
- 4:00 UTC, 11
- 5:00 UTC, 9
- 6:00 UTC, 7
- 7:00 UTC, 6
- 8:00 UTC, 4
- 9:00 UTC, 8
- 10:00 UTC, 11
- 11:00 UTC, 7
- 12:00 UTC, 15
- 13:00 UTC, 23
- 14:00 UTC, 21
- 15:00 UTC, 24
- 16:00 UTC, 28
- 17:00 UTC, 31
- 18:00 UTC, 15
- 19:00 UTC, 37
- 20:00 UTC, 26
- 21:00 UTC, 25
- 22:00 UTC, 24
- 23:00 UTC, 15
New posts by hour of day, UTC.
Top keywords
The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/healthIT.
- epic 118 posts
- healthcare 82 posts
- analyst 68 posts
- patient 52 posts
- epic analyst 25 posts
- health 76 posts
- ehr 34 posts
- hospital 46 posts
- clinical 47 posts
- informatics 26 posts
- data 65 posts
- hospital system 13 posts
- phi 13 posts
- job 59 posts
- ambulatory 11 posts
- mychart 10 posts
- medical 29 posts
- career 35 posts
- system 46 posts
- hipaa 13 posts
- fhir 12 posts
- certifications 20 posts
- systems 34 posts
- experience 62 posts
- cerner 8 posts
- role 37 posts
- hl7 10 posts
- scribe 11 posts
- emr 12 posts
- vendor 23 posts
- workflows 27 posts
- patient access 7 posts
- epic certifications 7 posts
- health informatics 12 posts
- analyst position 9 posts
- staff 21 posts
- patients 16 posts
- principal trainer 6 posts
- application analyst 6 posts
- clinicians 10 posts
Common questions
How much karma do you need to post in r/healthIT?
100 comment karma. AutoModerator removes posts from accounts below that with a message telling them to participate more in the community before creating a post, or to message the moderators for approval. No account age requirement is published.
Can I promote my health IT product in r/healthIT?
Not as the point of the post. The rules say original posts should not be solely for marketing a commercial product, website or service. Vendor roundups and company field reports were among the removed posts in our sample. A real question or a workflow write-up with no pitch has a much better chance.
Is r/healthIT a good place to ask how to become an Epic analyst?
Yes, if you are specific. Career threads are the core of the subreddit and working analysts answer them in detail. Give your current role, certifications and what you have already tried. Vague versions of the question are posted constantly and several were removed in our sample.
Why was my r/healthIT post removed?
The most common cause is the 100 comment karma requirement. Others are a link post without a starter comment, a post that reads as marketing, a survey, or a repeat submission. About 28% of posts in our sample were removed, roughly 20% by moderators and AutoModerator and the rest by Reddit's filters.
Data as of October 4, 2026. Numbers come from public Reddit data (the Arctic Shift archive and GummySearch) sampled on this date. Removal share counts posts taken down by moderators, AutoModerator or Reddit's own filters. Banner and icon belong to the community. Moderators change rules without notice, so treat the sidebar as the final word.
