Anyone work in Health Information Management or know about it?

[niccig]

Ah yes, more job/career questions from me. I have applied for some jobs in my old field, but something is still not sitting quite right with me. Both my ILs worked in Health Care. FIL was nurse anesthetist, MIL was nurse and then a nursing home administrator, and now consults. They both asked me if I would consider the Health Care field. If I had a do over, I think I would have considered it when went to college - in the last few years I did 2 UCLA classes in anthropology that were Human Osteology and Paleopathology - evidence on human bones of diseases/stress etc. I found it fascinating, as MIL knows, she visited and I had a plastic skull on the dining room table.

MIL then asked if I had considered Health Information Management or Technology. I was a librarian, actually a law librarian and I like to build databases. I can be a bit of a geek, my favourite class in my Library degree was Systems Analysis and Design. We took the class with the IT students and I was the only Library student that got an A. This was 14 years ago though.

I never considered taking what I know of information management and applying it to the Health Care field. I've looked at the American Health Information Management Association, and there seems to be a few options from coding certificates, to Bachelor, Post-Bachelor Certificates, to Masters Degrees. Does anyone work in this part of health care that can give any advice? How family friendly is the work? Are there part-time positions? We've talked about me being part-time during middle and high school, or the danger years as DH calls it.

Thanks for any advice,
Nicci

[niccig]

Bump as it fell a pages on.
If anyone knows anything, I would appreciate the advice.

[brgnmom]

I'll try to be of help. I have a master's of science in health research & policy... now I don't know very much about working at a library per se, but I'm sure that your background working as a law librarian would be a strength in having organizational skills. My concentration in health services research required some computer programming (SAS and SPSS) and knowledge in biostatistics -- but those are things that were not mandatory prior to starting the program. They were definitely skills that I needed to deveop in order to complete the master's thesis and research project however.

Health care information management and technology is such a broad field and given the health care reform, I'm sure that there will be many new opportunities in the future. Certain places like the VA hospital system allow for part-time hours. It's great how you've developed a new interest in this field. Good luck!

[lilycat88]

I work for a large multi-hospital system in strategic planning/market research. I have a masters in health administration.

You might be interested in a small and not well known area of healthcare called, with some variation, Decision Support. As an analyst, I'm charged with accessing a very large centralized database that houses clinical, demographic, financial, etc. data regarding patients using our facilities to determine things like what areas of the state are people coming from to use our facilities, what service lines have seen a decrease in volume, are certain physicians decreasing their activities in our facilities, etc. The questions we provide data and information for are extremetly varied. I am not a clinical person but work in the marketing/strategic planning area. So, I deal mainly with market research and tie in a little clinical and a little financial. But, hardcore financial or clinical things go to financial and clinical analysts. We do a lot of "research" and trend identification. And, yeah, we're all a little data geekish :ROTFLMAO:

My background was an undergraduate degree in journalism/public relations/advertising but after an internship in a hospital, I realized I liked the healthcare aspect more than I actually liked doing the PR thing. So, I went on for a master's degree.

I don't have any good links to send you describing the field. It's one of those things that most hospitals have to some degree or another but might call something different. I'd be happy to share a copy of my job description with you.

On the family friendly front, I've found it's entirely supervisor and organizational culture dependent. I have an amazing director who feels that as long as projects get done on time and accurately, chair time isn't important. I work full time but never have an issue with leaving early if I need to or taking care of family things when I need to. But, I've been on the other side as well with a manager who was having family issues and NEVER went home. So, we all had to work long hours as well. HATED that place.