Healthcare: The Upside of an Aging Population — Plenty of Great Jobs

(MoneyWatch) 

(Editor's note: This article is part of The Coming Job Boom, a BNET series about business trends that are shaping tomorrow's
careers.)

No matter what shape health care reform takes, here's one
thing you can count on: The growth in health care-related jobs is about to
explode. Not just doctors and nurses, but hospital CFOs, IT chiefs, clinical
service directors and managers of all sorts will be needed to oversee a growing
army of front and back office support. The reason?
href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080417111300.htm">Simple demographics.

“We are within 10 years of all baby boomers
retiring,” says Dr. Rulon Stacey, a fellow at the American College of
Healthcare Executives and CEO of the $1.1 billion-a-year Poudre Valley Health
System in Fort Collins, Colorado. “And when that happens there is
going to be a greater need for medical care and people to run medical care. We
need managers.”

The downturn has been brutal for plenty of professions. But
the demand for managers in health care has remained strong. That’s
partly why healthcare jobs make up 10 of the 20 fastest-growing occupations,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact, the Bureau predicts that
href="http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs035.htm">healthcare will generate some 3.2
million jobs through 2018, more than any other industry.

Scripps Health CEO Chris Van Gorder

And even the prospect of health care reform, which
proponents argue will lessen the bureaucracy and cut administrative costs, isn’t
likely to curb the demand created by our aging nation. That’s the
belief of Chris Van Gorder, the CEO of San Diego-based Scripps Health, a $2.3
billion non-profit that runs four hospitals and 19 outpatient facilities. Scripps
has added more than 100 manager positions in the past several years, and Van
Gorder says he’s on a constant hunt for skilled managers and those
fresh out of MBA programs, even if they haven’t worked in health
care. In addition, he runs an in-house leadership program to develop management
talent from his clinical ranks. Salaries run in the low six figures. “Many
of our people now want to have careers in management,” says Van
Gorder. “Even our tech guys are going back to school to be good in
management.”

The opportunities are plentiful at small and mid-sized
practices. Dr. William Jesse, president of the 22,000-member Medical Group Management
Association, which represents doctors and administrators in group practices (some
as large as 100 physicians) says the complexities of dealing with
Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies is giving rise to tens of thousands
of new management roles. “It used to be a physician’s
spouse or a nurse they knew a long time could take on that role,”
says Jesse. “But we see more business school graduates trained for
those roles.”

As in many fields, tech know-how can help your prospects. America’s
health care system is notoriously behind other industries in automation, but
the country is in the midst of an urgent push to modernize the system. (Why,
for instance, can you go to an ATM anywhere in the world and get your account
statement, but if you get hit by a car an ER doctor usually has no way to find
out if you have any allergies?) The
href="http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx">American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009 aims to change that.

The Act has pumped about $30 billion into the health care
technology sector, with some of that money going towards speeding up the effort
to create electronic patient records. That in turn is creating business for
people like Steve Malik, CEO of Medfusion, a North Carolina company that makes
secure patient/provider portals for medical practices. “All the
things you’re used to in the airline or travel industry, we’re
bringing to medicine,” says Malik, whose company is one of many
trying to modernize medical practices. “You can log in and get a
summary of your visit, have lab results forwarded to you, have your referrals
sent directly to a specialist. The self-service things that
consumers now expect, along with the stimulus money, are driving the change.”

Change that’s boosting his payroll. Last year,
Malik hired 100 people for jobs — some paying as much as $300,000 —
in sales, tech support, engineering and marketing, and he plans to hire another
100 this year. His company is now serving some 30,000 providers. “I
can tell you no matter what happens with health care reform, people are
demanding improved access and service and providers have to step up and supply
that,” says Malik. “I don’t see this industry
going anywhere else but up.”

More in The Coming Job Boom series:

• The Smart Grid: Where Green Tech Is Serious About Hiring
  
• 
  
  href="http://www.bnet.com/2403-13070_23-405626.html">R&D:
  
  Skilled, Well-Educated Workers Wanted (and Not Just the
  
  Science Geeks)
• 
  
  href="http://www.bnet.com/2403-13070_23-406763.html">Financial Planning: Baby Boomers Need Money Advice. And They Don't Want It From Wall Street.
• Consulting: Those Companies That Laid You Off? They Want You Back, Sort of.