everyone says this is the place to go, institutes are popping up providing trainign for people to become ultrasound technologists etc. We know, or read that there is a shortage of nurses but aside from that what else does the health care industry have to offer in terms of career choices for people?
The HIPAA regulations created some healthcare related I/T work.
but really, unless someone is in health sciences, is teh health industry really a good destination? the pressure to cut costs have been nagging hospitals and physicians for the last decade, as the HMOs muscle in and decide service delivery costs. I assume that same kind of operational pressures exist in business,ops and I/T for health systems.
How do these circumstances make healthcare industry a good choice?
^ what happened yaar.did you get a new project in that sector.
The short of it is that unless specialization is your forte, procedures and treatment will become commodotized more than ever. You will see PA's and RN assistants doing appendectumies in the near future. The only safety valve, from the patients point is of view is if the industry goes global in treatment and talent. You will soon see diagnoses done in India, procedures in US and treatment in Mexico. One lumpsum cost....I can dream can't I?
How do these circumstances make healthcare industry a good choice?
Maybe the amount of baby-boomers getting old and sick (with hopefully a good insurance) balances out the other shortcomings?
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ahh, yes if you are a geriatrics provider, or a phrama corp in that arena. But the industry is being forcved to be lean. How does that mean more opportunities for people who are not doctors/nurses and med techs etc.
Not really, I was reading up on the whole healthcare industry hype, and thats where the jobs are in teh future, but nothing in it indicated that the jobs that are in there in the future are the same jobs as people have now.
for someone who is in wen development, its probably better to get a med tech certificate rather than thinking that healthcare industry will have tons of opprtunities for web developers.
heck MBAs are a diff story, whether u are in finance, mkt or ops mgmt you canget in. but from a perspective that healthcare will fill the temporary void left by the slowdown in tech sector, in my humble opinion is a bit too far fatched
The healthcare industry is really a great bread and butter job situation. The worker bees like the med techs will always be in great demand, and it will continue to be that way for the forseeable future.
The great unknown is the State programs. Medicaid, ie the Welfare programs are going to be busted down soon, with looming state deficits. The Medicare system is still grossly underfunded, and with prescriptions drugs it will be more so. That leaves private payors, namely the insurance companies.
If you look at well run insurers, they are actually dropping poor contracts, and contracting revenue rather than growing at all costs. (Jack Rowe at Aetna is a friend of mine).
So you are really asking are there good jobs in an industry where the payment sources are in jeopardy, and the demand is growing. Not a good equation as far as I am concerned. More pain to come....
Thanks for the analysis, That has been my hypothesis as well i.e. teh price/cost pressures driven largely in part by insurance companies which are under heavy pressure these days, health care as an industry is not a great place to be if you are not a provider (physician, nurse) or a worker bee (phelbotomist, lab tech, ultrasound tech etc)
Having consulted to a few major insurance companies over last few years, what was coing down the chain for hospitals was becoming evident.
The jobs of techies and your SG&A variety may be more secure than in other segments for teh time being, but thats just it.
When i talk to my doctor pals they complain that the cost pressures have been affecting their paycheck, job security and work conditions as well.
Not really, I was reading up on the whole healthcare industry hype, and thats where the jobs are in teh future, but nothing in it indicated that the jobs that are in there in the future are the same jobs as people have now.
for someone who is in wen development, its probably better to get a med tech certificate rather than thinking that healthcare industry will have tons of opprtunities for web developers.
heck MBAs are a diff story, whether u are in finance, mkt or ops mgmt you canget in. but from a perspective that healthcare will fill the temporary void left by the slowdown in tech sector, in my humble opinion is a bit too far fatched
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^ this is a very brief and tech heavy assessment which doesn;t deal with the Health care industry in detail. Tech budgets are like budgets in any industry. Let's leave that aside for a moment.
Medical procedures like any other service or product are becoming commodotized with advances in tech and R&D. As I mentioned above, in a typical operation threater, there are as many Physicians assistance doing minor surgical work as there a cardiac surgeons. Why? The reason is that over aperiod of time with advances in procedures and technology and tools to make that happen ( I am not talking about the ERP system at the hospital or a Web Based transaction system for billing by private practices), the need for having too manyy highly paid surgeons to do routine procedures is getting minimal. As procedures become commodotized whether through this mechanism plus the squeeze put on by the Insurance companies, a shift to a "physician oversight" model is there.
As the success rate for these procedures gets higher, you will see more and more of these procedures get commodotized. people go to colombia for plastic surgery, cosmetic or otherwise. People go to India for heart disease treatment. This is the wave of the future. Globalization..is going to impact this industry as well. So the jobs that are going to be here are the ones that require either extreme specialization in medicine and procedures or management of the treatment though global subsidiaries.
Whether it is 10 yrs or 20 yrs out or whatever. In my opinion, this is what is coming down the pipe.
Thanks for the info. the tech aspect was to just give an example, plus since health care is often shown as the safe haven for former tech sector workers.
What is your assessment of the insurance industry pressure on the providers and the impact of such.
I am not sure why people think that healthcare industry is so different from other industry. This self importance attached to themselves by doctors and consultants working in that industry baffles me. Even in the IT scenario, the jobs are not secure. Offshoring has gained so much steam. GE Medical Systems has just set up a huge facility outsid eof delhi to not only do develoipment but R&D. You have companies like Mind tree consulting, Infosys and Wipro gaining market share by the day. I would htink people need to wake up and smell the coffee rather than resting on their laurels, which is, mismagament of an industry with all it's stakholders for over 30 yrs.
Healthcare is and always will be a local phenomenon. Docs will always think they are gods, and technology will always advance.
A much bigger issue is inflation and unemployment. For every high tech machine you have about a hundred housekeepers, nurses, aides, clerk and secretaries. While unemployment is still high, lots more women will be flushed back into the work force. When unemployment is low, these women generally have husbands that go back into the work force, and the women scale back hours.
As hospitals experience nearly 50% of their costs in labor, (70% in other areas of health care, and nearly 90% in Home Care) these are the best of times. If the economy accelerates, unemployment goes down, and inflation goes up, hospitals will be under severe pressure. The current benign conditions are pretty well maximizing earning power for healthcare entities.
^ actually that is where I disagree a bit. even with advances in technology, th eimpact on human intervention is still high. How do you suppose their a constant shortage of nurses with salaries that rival or a re greater than that of Perdiatricians.
Actually the staffing ratios in hospital wings have not changed for years. Technology generally has more to do with patient outcomes, physician information, than cost savings on labor. The technology actually increases training cost, and thus turnover costs.
I can remember the nursing shortages of the 1980's. you ain't seen nothing! Things can and will get much worse when the economy starts to boom. Salaries are only part of the equation. Because these positions are female dominated, family, work scedules, days off, become very critical if the family finances are soaring, and work becomes more optional.
Overlooked are the huge deficits which are building at the State levels. Medicaid funding will have to be cut if this persists. You are already seeing a lot of this in school budgets.
OG I know physicians who are working in VA hospitals, and they basically have betyween 3-5 minutes they can spend with patients on teh average. They are caught between trying to provide a quality service, yet at the same time trying to meet the patients/day expectations placed upon them.
ask any doctor whatthey think of the workplace now and 10 years ago and you will hear a very consistent answer. add to it the expense of malpracxtice insurance which is more than many people's annual salary, and you will see the problems even the providers face in the industry.
But then again, I beleive that in US the high salaries for physicians were artificially generated due to a smart move by their trade associations by limiting the number of graduates each year.
I didn;t think of it that way, OG. I guess you are right. It still fits into my hypothesis that job functions like PA's and RN;s would actually go up because the procedures and diagnosis can be farmed out to these and other entities.
The VA system is the dregs. They should close down the whole thing and create a specialized insurance program for vets. The care would be better.
The only ones getting rich these days are the attorneys. Until serious tort reform is in place, the attorneys you see advertising evreywhere will be raking in millions, and every healthcare professional and provider institution will be under pressure. Only serious tort reform can really help here. Some docs pay 250k per year in insurance that was 25k 10 years ago. Some states cannot recruit enough docs (or PA's or NP's either).
Pricing pressures of commodities will rise if the dollar gets stronger, and hospitals are major users of electricity/Gas/Oil.
All in all the gains made by technology (requireing capital expenditures) have been eaten up in other ways. Add that to endowment funds that were killed by the stock market drop, bond issuances that are hard to discharge and refinance at lower rates, and you have a very difficult situation brewing.
I don't think that Health care will be a growth area for tech workers since most hospitals which were going online/computer based have already done so...so now it's more maintaince.
I also think health care is going to have to change...it's too expensive to provide care in the US, but there are many factors and lobbyiest fighting that change.
I think it will not bottom out...it can't but i don't think it'll grow or that they'll be tons of money in it. I don't think there should be btw.......why should someone be making millions in perscribing or making that medicine while their patient are choosing btwn food and medicine in the USA.
I think it's not just limiting graduates that uped physician pay but a perception in the US mentality that physicians should be getting paid that much. Further as for their limited time with patietns that's a function of how much money they want to make....more patients per hour more charges more money. unless their working for an HMO...
The VA system is the dregs. They should close down the whole thing and create a specialized insurance program for vets. The care would be better.
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Not all VA. From my understanding some of the VA programs are getting national awards in care provision and much more financially stable than the rest of healthcare.
the amount of graduates is controlled in order to maintain the supply and demand balance so docs can get paid more. there are other countries with good docs who dont make a half of what US docs make.
as far as docs spending time with patients, i have nuff docs in my family and they have to manage how many patients they are seeing because the have certain goals given to them service wise, so the healthcare institution they work for is prtofitable..now you are right this is run by insurance companies ..they give less per patient than docs were used to, so to improve profitability they have to increase utilization and productivity, sadly productivity is not always measured in terms of quality but patients seen per day..
other reasons why this is expensive.. the pimpin that pharmacy companies do. I am not sure how many times my doc pals have had freebie fully paid trips to vacation spots to attend seminars by pharama companies... the cost eventually is passed on to consumers..but since they have insurance, the PBMs have to manage that cost..so they buy in bulk to cut their costs down but its still expensive..and since the PBMs are part of or affiliated with health insurance companies..the companies want to be more profitable overall and pay less per patient to the docs...the docs dont want pay cuts...so they too run patients faster thru their offices than carl lewis on a 100 yard dash..
who gets the raw end of the deal.. the consumer..
but thats a diif topic and has to do with problems in healthcare rather than job opportunities.
I have to respond to this and I hope i'm not going to far off your topic BUT
"the amount of graduates is controlled in order to maintain the supply and demand balance so docs can get paid more. there are other countries with good docs who dont make a half of what US docs make."
medical residency programs have been told to limit residents to reduce the physicians out there BUT that is not the only factor that controls physican pay and they have also pushed to limit specialist and focus on internist/gen med. IT would be very simpilistic to assume that the way to control physician salary is through limiting physicans..it is only a factor in that equation.
Further, those countries over all have much smaller health care cost OVERALL....as a percentage of GDP or even procedure costs when compared to the US. Physicians in england, europe etc do make more money than the average joe but not to the extent or level that physicians in the US do and that is IMO mainly because for some reason we think we should pay them more....and the doctors in the US expect to get paid more and expect a higher standard of living than doctors in other parts of the world. IT is why my sister and brother in law chose the US over Canada, england and pakistan. Now please don't think that the reason US health care costs are so high are strictly a function of physician salary, i think technology and pharma costs are extremly high too....
Finally, we tend to deamonize players in health care, first it was the hospitals kicking people out then, the the insureres and then it'll be the physicians. It is all a circle. Current health care economic thought think that the BIG insurance BUYERS are the ones controlling costs/payments. I.E. companies like IBM, FORD, Microsoft and GE that go out and contract, bargain and sign on with an insurance company and try to get the cheapest rates for their health care coverage. They control the purse strings, which then tightens what the insurers have to offer and this then leads to lower payemtns for hospitals and physicians. The "BUYERS" control strenght is rarely pushed in the public eye....
HOwever, on the flip side many insurers are being pushed to look at quality, for example Blue shield of california is looking at quality and expects hospitals that htey contract with demonstrate quality improvement initiatives and membership in many nationally known orgnaizations such leapfrog.
Finally, you're right the above discussion is about basic issues with the health care industry but i think that those looking to decide if health care is a field to get into, whatever their role in it, should understand the quagmire it is and why it offers some basic stability but high earning potential is unpredictable because of factorsd discussed previously as well as others such as legislation on pharamceutical importation, states like california potentially providing health care coverage for all residents and what happens with Medicare.