Medical Career Paths
Written by Erin Flynn Jay
Employment opportunities for health information
management and health care management professionals
are expected to grow faster than average.
For medical military personnel planning their move to civilian life, a wealth of opportunities exists in the health care world, and not simply as doctors, nurses or other occupations on the civilian front line where health care and patients first meet.
According to several schools with extensive experience in educating military personnel, there are many steady, rewarding jobs available in health care-related fields such as health care administration, including human resources and facilities management, clinical lab sciences, medical billing and coding, and information management.
“There are broad applications [in health care] for professional occupations [requiring] technology experience, cost containment knowledge and managerial and human resources expertise,” said Barbara Philibert, a professor at Ashford University’s college of arts and sciences. “Many military students have skill sets in these areas that are widely applicable with a B.A. in health care.”
Not all is rosy in the field of health care, which is not immune from the recent U.S. economic downturn. Health care accounts for about 13 percent of employment in the United States, or some 16 million workers, and while the number of new jobs is rising in some sectors, the overall rate of job growth has slowed.
Among the factors affecting health care employment, as noted by a recent article in the Wall Street Journal: Fewer people are getting elective procedures; the number of uninsured patients is rising as a result of general layoffs; local and state governments are cutting health care funding; and hospitals have lost income from their investment funds.
But while job growth has slowed in health care overall, a number of particular occupations in this field do show good growth prospects. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates employment opportunities for health information management professionals, for example, will grow faster than average for all related occupations through 2016, with employment rates in the health care field to rise 18 percent to 26 percent between 2004 and 2014.
Sources of additional information on medical records and health information technicians include the American Health Information Management Association, at www.ahima.org, which provides a list of accredited training programs, and the American Academy of Professional Coders, at www.aapc.com, which provides information on training and certification for medical coders.
Regarding education programs available for particular types of health care occupations, Allied Schools, for example, says it has seen a steady rise in enrollment numbers for medical-related courses such as medical billing, medical coding and medical transcription. Allied President and CEO Steve Rathje said his schools’ programs particularly target fields with good job prospects, such as dental care, for which Allied recently created a course for prospective dental office assistants.
“Many of our military students have a background in performing administrative duties while on active duty and are able to make a smooth transition into this particular career field,” Rathje said. “One of the fastest growing industries with a high demand for new personnel is the health care industry [in general]. For many of us, job security is a primary factor when choosing a new career or enriching one’s current career goals.”
DeVry University, meanwhile, touts in particular its B.S. in clinical lab sciences (CLS), a threeyear program that prepares students to work with pathologists and other medical specialists on identifying disease and evaluating and communicating about the effectiveness of treatment.
DeVry CLS program director Naomi McMillan noted that her school’s program, which is seeking accreditation from the National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences, allows students to receive credit for training by the military as medical lab technicians, which in turn helps them earn their certifications more quickly and get into the job market that much sooner.
“There is a huge shortage of CLS nationwide,” McMillan said. “[Students] will be in great demand once they are ready to enter the career field. [Certification should] increase their earning potential by about $10,000 a year.”
Herzing University Online says its programs in medical assistance and billing, insurance coding and health care management are ideal preparation for what can be very fulfilling jobs. Medical assistants, for example, have a varied work day and interact with many different people, including patients, noted Loretta Mattio Hamilton, Herzing’s department chair of medical assisting, medical billing and coding, who said some medical assistants use such jobs to build experience in health care and eventually move on to nursing or health care management.
“Both medical billing and medical assisting are in-demand jobs, making them well-suited for transitioning military personnel to get training and a good job upon completion of either program,” Hamilton said.
The school administrators argue that not only does military medical training provide a great starting point for a civilian career in health care, but that the general skills servicemembers learn or at least sharpen in the military serve exservicemembers very well indeed in the civilian health care world.
“Just the discipline and attention to detail emphasized in the military in itself is key to becoming a good clinical laboratory scientist,” DeVry’s McMillan said. “Noticing subtle differences in cells and lab values provides invaluable information to health care providers in providing quality health care to their patients.”
Core military values, such as devotion to high standards and honest, diligent hard work, also count for a lot. “Medical billing and coding requires personnel to act in accordance to the highest standards, which means that coders must perform their duties ethically, with honesty, diligence and integrity,” Hamilton said.
In addition, military service can also literally count for credit in some schools’ health care programs. At Ashford University, for example, military students can apply up to 99 approved credits, including prior learning credits, toward their bachelor’s degree.
Once the post-military service educational programs are done, school administrators say their students very easily land employment. Ed Hackman, director of health care partnerships at Bellevue University, said graduates at his school with prior health care experience have no problem finding jobs in the private sector. He said he is not aware of any Bellevue graduate who has been unable to find a job of some type.
“They could look at running a clinic as a director; they could look at working in a hospital in a managerial situation or in an executive position like a vice president,” Hackman said. “A lot depends on what their background is and what their interest is. If they have all their experience in imaging, they may want to go run an imaging department in a health care facility. There are a lot of options out there—health care is a huge industry.” ♦