The healthcare industry is an increasingly diverse field where many different areas may interact to provide support and resources.
Many of these fields are specialized and require additional studies. Professions including direct patient care in areas like medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, and physical therapy among many others will require a graduate or medical degree.
Healthcare management encompasses careers in organizations such as hospitals, group medical practices, physician offices, government agencies, and other health organizations. Healthcare managers ensure the delivery of high-quality health care and help develop public policy regarding access to and paying for care.
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Focus Area in the Healthcare Industry
Here is a sample list of applied areas in this industry:
Direct Healthcare demands careful academic and professional planning early on in order to gain admission into a program that will lead to independent medical practice within these fields. Medical degrees in direct health care offer a range of variability within career paths. Often career paths take the form of concentrations and specialties within medicine areas and intended populations.
Healthcare Administration combines leadership, management, and healthcare towards a variety of careers in hospitals, large health organizations or academic settings utilizing skills and degrees in business, policy, finance, economics and organizational health. Most jobs are within clinical settings and can involve careers as an administrative executive, chief executive officer, admitting manager, controller (in charge of budget), director of hospital fundraising, data-processing manager, director of managed care, health information manager, health promotion and wellness manager, medical librarian, medical social worker, patient advocate, quality assurance director, health care analyst, managed care analyst, and medical assistant to name those with more popularity.
Public Health aims to improve lives globally by focusing on prevention and intervention of programs to promote healthy lifestyles. Career paths for those in public health are often within academic and research environments, hospital settings, corporations, government healthcare organizations, and healthcare administrations.
Biotechnology joins advanced technology and biology for the improvement of organisms including agriculture, combating rare diseases, and pharmaceuticals. Often, biotechnology careers take place within research, clinical and medical settings. Career paths as either a research or laboratory technician working on discovery research and grant proposals or a biotechnologist within pharmaceuticals, agriculture, industrial or biology-related fields are amongst the more common.