informatics Archives - NonClinical Physicians

Pursue One of These Part Time Nonclinical Hospital Jobs

John Jurica — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 12:49:49 +0000

The Path of Least Resistance – 396

In this week's episode, John describes the most accessible nonclinical hospital jobs and how to pursue them.

These hospital-based roles—physician advisor for utilization management and physician advisor for clinical documentation integrity—present relatively low barriers to entry while offering flexible schedules and meaningful work that leverages a physician's clinical expertise in new ways.

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Breaking Into Hospital-Based Physician Advisor Roles

John explains how physicians can position themselves for utilization management positions, where they'll help determine appropriate patient care status and educate colleagues on insurance guidelines. This role involves reviewing cases to ensure proper resource utilization while maintaining quality standards.

He recommends specific resources, including books like “Hospital Guide to Contemporary Utilization Review,” and organizations such as the American College of Physician Advisors. He also suggests gaining practical experience by joining hospital committees focused on case management or denials.

Building Expertise in Clinical Documentation Integrity

The clinical documentation integrity advisor role focuses on ensuring accurate medical documentation to support proper coding, appropriate reimbursement, and quality metrics.

John outlines practical steps physicians can take to prepare for this career path, including connecting with coding specialists, studying CPT guidelines, and engaging with professional organizations like the Association of Clinical Documentation Integrity Specialists. He emphasizes how this position can significantly impact hospital operations while allowing physicians to use their clinical knowledge in a less stressful environment.

Summary

Both physician advisor positions provide excellent opportunities for physicians to transition gradually from clinical roles while maintaining involvement in patient care at a systems level. These positions can begin as part-time commitments of just a few hours per week and potentially grow into full-time roles, making them ideal for physicians seeking work-life balance or testing nonclinical waters.

Additional resources and networking opportunities can be found through organizations like ACPA, ACDIS, AHIMA, and annual events like the SEAK Nonclinical Careers Conference.

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 396

Pursue One of These Part Time Nonclinical Hospital Jobs

John: I want to provide a brief overview of two part-time hospital physician advisor jobs that you might want to consider if you've decided to expand your options and begin your transition away from direct primary care for whatever reason. I’m addressing these two because they overlap quite a bit. They're both based in the hospital setting, generally started part-time, and can later become full-time jobs. There aren't a lot of barriers to starting such a position, and if you're already working in the hospital environment, it's really not all that difficult to do.

So, these are the two positions I'm talking about today: the physician advisor for utilization management and the physician advisor for clinical documentation integrity. Just so we know, using this term "physician advisor," sometimes these are called medical directors. Now, if you're doing utilization management for a large insurance company or other healthcare payer, they're typically going to use "medical director" for that position as the title. In the hospital setting, it's typically called a physician advisor. It's a part-time job that could start out as little as one or two hours a day, but they might also use that medical director moniker as well.

If you're already working in the hospital in a variety of inpatient settings, you could easily start doing one of these jobs if your organization has a need for it. So, when I talk about this kind of topic and about transitioning, I do like to generally talk about some other things to prepare us to make this kind of transition.

So, the first thing I want to do is mention some of these items and talk about how to get into the right mindset. What happens typically if you've been working clinically full-time and now you're thinking of making this change? It can be difficult because of some limiting beliefs or even some myths that we have internalized that I want to talk about right now. I'm not going to address every one of these; I actually have addressed this in other presentations. As a reminder, let's just go through two or three of these.

So, the first thing is that this is going to be a difficult process because all I know is medicine and I don't have the necessary skills to begin a new career. Here’s what I have to say about that issue: especially for these jobs, having completed medical school and residency, maybe a fellowship, you really already have a lot of demonstrated valuable skills and abilities. Okay? So whether it's focus and concentration, lifelong learning commitment, organizational skills, teamwork, analyzing data, and formulating a plan, you have a lot of background in the necessary sciences, including biochemistry, physiology, anatomy, epidemiology, etc. You're good at writing, lecturing, and speaking, teaching, and mentoring. You've done leadership oftentimes in your roles. You're great at decision-making, and you have a lot of other qualities that make you an awesome employee in general. So those exist, and these two jobs don't really have a lot of requirements for additional skills. So they lend themselves to being learned on the job. You will learn some new skills for this new career, but they'll be learned on the job. And since you're already a lifelong learner, it's going to be quite straightforward for you to do that.

The second belief sometimes is that you're wasting your medical career if you pursue a nonclinical job. The thing is, once you become a clinician, you actually have reached a plateau, and there are dozens and dozens of other jobs that you can only do after becoming an experienced clinician. It's like saying that you're wasting your training as an attorney if you decide to pursue politics or to become a judge, or you're wasting your training as a nurse if you decide to become a nursing home administrator. An administrative job is a business position, but yet you have that background as a clinician, which is very helpful for many important, fulfilling careers. Having a medical degree and board certification is a prerequisite to even being considered for that new career. So it's not wasted training. Chances are you've already applied your training in that venue, and now you want to move on to something bigger and better. In some cases, oftentimes it even pays more and has more responsibility, particularly when you're taking a leadership role.

Number three that I want to talk about is: you know, my family, my friends, colleagues, and other people I know will be disappointed if I leave clinical medicine for a variety of reasons. You think that they might not really understand it, and maybe they'll say something that makes you think that. But the reality is, particularly if you're burned out or unfulfilled with this job, it's not really satisfying you doing this clinical work. You know, everybody in your life that loves you just wants you to be happy, fulfilled, and working in a career that brings you joy. That's really the ultimate goal. Many of us think that taking care of patients is the way to do that, but for whatever reason, sometimes it's just not true. So I don't think the people that are important in your life are going to sit you down and try to convince you not to remain in a job that's tedious, unfulfilling, or producing anxiety or is unhealthy.

I know the financial aspects will be a concern at times, but really, ultimately, that shouldn't be the thing that stops you because there are a lot of positions that will equal your current financial reimbursement or compensation, and yet with less stress and more joy in doing that very job. I think that shouldn't hold you back either, unless you can find there's something simple to change in what you're doing clinically to make it more palatable that I think you should continue to move forward.

Now, there are also some caveats that I want to mention to you. Some of these are pretty obvious, and don't be offended if it seems like I'm being too obvious, but let's see here: first, no matter what job you're doing, continue to do it with excellence. Okay? So just because you're burned out or you're feeling like you're going to have to change jobs or something like that, don't sort of quit while on the job. Don't become lazy or try not to become overwhelmed and just indifferent. Your current employer and colleagues will be asked to comment on your dedication, integrity, ability to work with others, accountability, etc. If you've already started to pull away and not keep up that high level of performance that you probably are used to doing, it can harm you because it may take you a while to get that first job. Particularly, even if you're going to stay with your current employer, hospital, or health system, then that might be something that puts the hold on it, particularly if you somehow have been becoming more vocal about how unhappy you are. So try to keep everything at that level of excellence and just move forward with trying to make the change.

The second caveat is you must try to gain some experience in your new career even before applying for the new job if you can. Notwithstanding what I said earlier that these jobs are open to you already, but every little bit of information and understanding of the role you're going to step into will be helpful. And so if that means volunteering somehow, you can do that. Two areas we're talking about are utilization management and clinical documentation integrity. They usually interface with the medical staff and clinics face-to-face when you're dealing with the topic and also in committees and subcommittees that deal with the results and try to come up with plans for improving things. You can usually volunteer for one of those committees and understand the lingo better. You can meet some of the people that are currently involved in that. Sometimes you can get a little bit of experience in a nonprofit board of some type, some steering committee. So think about that.

That's the second caveat. The third is that it's always great to use a mentor, find a mentor, engage a mentor, and interact with them. Now, when I tell you about mentors, I'm always talking about something that's pretty low-key, not a lot of time. I've had mentors in my life who didn't even know they were mentors—just someone I would meet with briefly or run through, you know, briefly for five or ten minutes, ask a question, get the answer, and then use that information to help me figure out my next steps. So it's helpful to have multiple mentors and just use them judiciously to help point you in the right direction. Obviously, this mentor should usually be someone who's doing the job that you're thinking about moving into.

And so, you know, that's just the third bit of advice. The fourth is that there's probably some book or course that can help you in the process. You know, on these topics, for these two exist, and I'll talk about resources where you can find those in a minute. Fifth, there are usually places, getting, you know, kind of building on the fourth one, there are usually specialty societies or associations, professional organizations that have more resources that I'm also going to mention later.

So that's given. And then the sixth thing is that sometimes when you're doing a nonclinical career, it's helpful to have some kind of a blog or a podcast or something. I mean, as an example, if you're becoming a medical writer, then, you know, if you can create a platform where you're writing regularly and you're sharing some of that for free, in addition to posting things that maybe you've sold that you've done as a medical writer, that could be awesome. In this situation for doing these two, I would say the main thing is to get a good LinkedIn profile. You probably could find your first job directly on LinkedIn without even engaging a headhunter or something like that. You know, particularly after you've already done the job at your current organization, if that's how you choose to move forward. But having a really completed LinkedIn profile, which is something I've talked about in the past, can really help people reach out to you and actually recruit you directly off of your LinkedIn profile as long as you put in there some of the experience that you've already gotten that applies to the job that you're looking for.

So, let’s start then with the first position, and that’s as physician advisor for utilization management. So, to summarize, in the hospital setting, again, you can do this kind of job for an insurance company, but in the hospital setting, it's a little different. It's quite direct with the providers; the physicians and NPs and PAs are taking care of patients in the hospital. So basically, the physicians who are leading the patient care will need help in determining the appropriate care status—outpatient versus inpatient, for example—and work with other team members to decide if continued stay is warranted. Warranted means meeting guidelines, specific guidelines that say that they should either go or stay. They need an intermediary like you, the physician advisor, to help educate on that and to actually answer questions directly on this patient that we're considering right now.

So, you can do teaching too, where you help clinicians understand CMS and other payer rules. And that's around the appropriateness of testing and invasive procedures. Like, you know, if somebody comes in for heart failure and you've got them 90% better, is it appropriate to do a colonoscopy? Well, that can be hard to justify. That's a pretty obvious example, but you don't want to be doing those things because you really want to try to keep that admission as short as possible while using the minimum resources so that the hospital actually has a bottom line.

There are full-time and part-time positions doing just what I've described. Most of those job descriptions will say that you need to be residency trained, board certified, with five or more years of clinical experience. Sometimes they have a preference for primary care, but not always. And they may even say that they want a current hospital staff member.

Now, I'm going to read you a typical job listing for this. They don't all look exactly like this, and this is a very shortened version of it, but just so we're clear, let me describe that: Candidates have a strong clinical background with excellent communication skills and leadership abilities. The role of the physician advisor of case management services requires the review of other physicians' cases, their plan of care, and resource utilization. Case study can be necessary for various reasons, including patient outliers, i.e., extended stays, utilization review issues, reimbursement issues, or quality concerns. The physician advisor will work with hospital administration on all campuses and clinical committees as requested to develop processes and guidelines to improve quality of care and value, or the outcomes divided by the cost.

So, that is a short version of a typical job description.

So, let's talk about some real practical things you can do other than being a good medical provider right now at your current institution. First thing, the first step is to see if you can get your hands on a copy of the "Hospital Guide to Contemporary Utilization Review" by Stephanie Daniels and Ronald Hirsch. This thing is probably at least five, maybe even as long as ten years ago, originally published. I think there are multiple editions. But this is a good guide. So, this is what I mentioned earlier. There may be a book that can be very helpful. I think it's relatively expensive. I looked it up recently, and it was like $170 for a new copy, but you might be able to find a used copy or you might go to your own hospital and say, "Hey, do you have a copy of this thing?" Because the utilization management department might have it. And it can be helpful to read through it; it gives some of the background behind doing utilization management and affecting things like length of stay and how to move people through the system. And also, you know, what needs to be documented.

If possible, here are some other steps you can take. Join your own hospital utilization or case management committee if one exists. Get involved with denials management, maybe even in appeals. You may not be able to appeal another physician's case, but if you have a case that becomes denied and you know, normally you hand that responsibility over to the UM department, you could try and at least be involved in the appeal in your case, particularly, you know, if you're talking about an online or telephone appeal, live appeal, and you can learn about what's important in the terminology.

Again, I'll reach back to what I said earlier about a mentor. So, look for a mentor that's currently working in utilization management, possibly the current medical director or physician advisor for your case management. Establish that relationship and just talk with them a little bit over time. Again, don't make them feel like you're trying to own your success. You want to just chat with them, get their advice on how they got into this and are they aware of any really good resources that they found to be helpful?

Here are some of the resources I think that are no-brainers that you can get into right away: You might look at the resources in the American College of Physician Advisors. You can find them at acpadvisors.org. It's the American College of Physician Advisors. You can just Google that if you want. And they have all kinds of research sources written. They've got lectures and conferences that they do every year. I think sometimes they might even have some kind of certification. When I last looked, I mean, there were at least six or seven tabs on their website for resources for their members. You can get involved directly, and there's probably publications that you can get from them as well. And I don't think the membership fees are all that high.

When I've talked to other people about this, they always bring up the Seek Annual Non-Clinical Careers Conference because usually they have at least one speaker talking about this one, utilization management for sure. Sometimes they also have somebody talking about the second topic for today, which is the CDI or clinical documentation improvement. If you want to get really into it a little bit and understand how people use guidelines, what the guidelines look like.

Oh, by the way, to find the Seek Annual Non-Clinical Careers Conference, it's usually in October, and you can find it at nonclinicalcareers.com/conference. That's a link that I created from my website. So if you go to nonclinicalcareers.com/conference, it should bring you to the Seek Annual Non-Clinical Careers Conference. It's spelled S-E-A-K. It doesn't stand for anything in particular, but it is in the Chicago area every October, and they've been doing that for about 15 or 16 years.

You can get a copy of the Milliman Clinical Guidelines. That's one set of guidelines that UM nurses and others who are doing reviews of charts for purposes of, you know, utilization management and continued stay and so forth. That's what they use. They use Milliman Clinical Guidelines. There's InterQual guidelines as well, I believe, but the Milliman seems to be more commonly used, and you can find that at mcg.com.

And then there's an organization called the American Academy of Professional Coders. Now, when I talk to UM people and when I was doing this job as a physician advisor, I don't think I ever saw that organization or heard of that organization. But if you go to aapc.com for American Academy of Professional Coders, there are resources there that you can access, and it gives you again some of the basic nitty-gritty about becoming a physician advisor for utilization management, benefits management, and so forth.

All right. So now I want to move to the next one, which is this physician advisor for clinical documentation improvement. Well, now we call it clinical documentation integrity. And basically, if we want a short description of this, it is as follows: Physicians in this position will need to learn about appropriate coding and documentation guidelines, either in the hospital or outpatient setting, and help teach other physicians about coding and interact with them on specific cases to make appropriate changes to coding if necessary. Full-time or part-time positions are available.

Now, this one, you know, there's a big motivation to do well on this because the coding is what leads to the reimbursement. It also leads to the quality of care as observed by other people because a big part of coding is to capture pre-existing conditions, complications, and so forth. And if you find things that are present on admission and document those appropriately, then they won't be counted as a complication later on. So if somebody is admitted with some problem, let's say pneumonia, and then they develop diabetes or hyperglycemia and then they get a coding for diabetes during that stay. Now, we all know that it's probably pre-existing, but if it's not put in as a present on admission, then it's going to be counted as a complication. And that's a bad thing that can affect your reimbursement at the hospital.

They usually are going to be looking for someone who's residency trained, board certified, with five or more years of clinical experience. The typical job listing will sound something like this: As the CDI physician advisor, the PA will act as a liaison between the CDI professional, HIM (which is Health Information Management), and the hospital's medical staff to facilitate accurate and complete documentation for coding and abstracting of clinical data, capturing severity, acuity, and risk of mortality in addition to DRG assignment.

So, that's what you're going to see, and you're not going to see requirements for a lot of formal training. What they might look for is more experience. Now, another comment I want to make, kind of a caveat, at any time you're looking for a job and you're looking at job descriptions is that keep in mind that a job description is the new employer's attempt to get absolutely 100% of things they could get in the best possible circumstances. So, they almost never get a person that meets all those so-called requirements. And so you have to try and tease out whether the requirement they're listing is absolutely mandatory. Like, for example, they might say they want someone with five years of experience and at least two years doing a CDI. Well, what if you have four years of experience and you're only doing one year of CDI? These things are all flexible, and you have to learn how to tell the difference between something that's absolutely required as opposed to something that would be nice to have because most of this will be learned on the job.

Okay, so here are some advice for steps to take. Number one, you might get a copy of the CPT Professional 2025, which is the CPT manual that's put out by the AMA every year. Now, it's expensive, and you know what? Things don't change that much. So if you can get an old copy of the one from 2024 or 2023 or 2022, a lot of the rules will be in there; it'll be exactly the same. It's just the fine details change from year to year in terms of the definitions of the DRGs and the weighting and things like that. So just try and get a copy of that, and you can probably borrow the old one from your current CDI group and go from there.

If possible, these are some actions you can take now to position yourself: If there's a CDI team, see if you can join as a volunteer or go to some of their meetings. Spend time with the coding specialists in the Health Information Department. When you talk about coding and documentation, not only do you have yourself as a clinician doing the documentation part of that, but you have the nurse documentation specialists. And maybe some paramedical staff, you know, that aren't nurses or physicians. And then you have the billing departments, whether it's in a clinic or at the hospital, what you would call the Health Information Department. They have experts in coding and documentation. They're the ones that do the final coding on the charts.

They're usually not a nurse, but they usually work so closely with a nurse and the physician advisor to get things right. Sometimes they're in a big hurry and they don't want to take the time to do that. So you have to help set up systems where you can quickly respond when they have a question. Because again, the more accurate it is, the better off the hospital is and better paid the hospital is.

Okay, so you're going to try and just start mingling with those people. You're going to identify a mentor that's currently doing this kind of work, clinical documentation integrity, and maybe the medical director if there's a medical director in the hospital doing this, or there might be somebody who's over that in a large medical group. It's totally different coding in the outpatient and inpatient side, so you might want to end up specializing in one or the other, but most of the time, what I'm talking about are the physicians who are working for the hospital to do this job.

And then you're going to also complete your LinkedIn profile, just like I mentioned for the last position, and try and focus and list your experience and documentation and coding in the hospital setting. No question comes up on LinkedIn all the time is, "I don't want to scare away somebody, or I don't want to tip my hat, my hand, so to speak, that I'm thinking of leaving and looking for this job." So sometimes you can do a LinkedIn profile that's somewhat generic. That's focusing on your professional activities, and you know, you might put in there all the things you've done clinically, and then maybe a paragraph that talks about what you've done from the standpoint of documentation and coding and understanding how it works because all clinicians need to do this anyway. But if you focus on it a little bit more, then a recruiter is going to be more prone to notice and actually reach out to you on LinkedIn and say, "Do you want to talk about maybe looking for a job?" And it could be even a headhunter who maybe doesn't even have a job for you right now, but when they notice someone with that kind of profile, then they're going to reach out and position themselves to be ready to tap you when the time comes.

Some of the other resources which would be very helpful would be the American College of Physician Advisors, which can be found at acpadvisors.org. I think this is the same one that I said earlier. It's good for both utilization management and for clinical documentation improvement. So that's a repeat. The Seek Annual Non-Clinical Careers Conference is another repeat. Every October, you have a two-day event with a pre-conference and post-conference, so there's a lot of activities going on. You can look that up.

There is something new here: the Association of Clinical Documentation Integrity Specialists. It's a hard one to remember; it's kind of a tongue-twister. The Association of Clinical Documentation Integrity Specialists, known as ACDIS, can be found at acdis.org. Lots and lots of resources there. You can join even before thinking about doing this in a way, see if there's information in it that sounds interesting to you. And then when you do think about moving forward, then start accessing some of those. I think that one has training and even certificates, things like that.

The other big one is the American Health Information Management Association. Now, this is multi—actually, both of these are multi-professional, I guess. There are nurses, there are physicians, there are health information management workers, there are all kinds of people in both of these: ACDIS.org and the American Health Information Management Association, which is called AHIMA, A-H-I-M-A. A lot of people refer to it as AHIMA, and it's at ahima.org.

And then I've seen one mentioned several times in the past called the National Association of Physician Advisors. When I last tried to access it, it would not let me link up because of a fear of some kind of lack of security on the website. You know, some of these old websites are not really good at preventing, you know, issues with people trying to steal information and so forth. So if you can find the National Association of Physician Advisors, that might be useful. Otherwise, the other four places I talked about would be helpful for you.

But, so that's basically what I had to say about these two nonclinical positions. Again, they start part-time, they can eventually go full-time. There's a lot of jobs out there. There's lots of resources, and you can maybe find a job where you're doing 50% clinical, 50% one of these, or go 100%. There's a lot of flexibility. And if you're in a big metropolitan area, there's probably many jobs around that would be at other institutions within driving distance.

And so that's why I talk about these quite frequently. I've always had a lot of—not my most of my nonclinical jobs were in the hospital setting. These also can lead to getting a BPM or a CMO job because if you think about it, the Chief Medical Officer at a hospital is responsible for typical things that go that include these: utilization management and length of stay, quality improvement, clinical documentation integrity, which goes directly into quality improvement, and then informatics a lot of times. And so if you're involved with any of those four, it's a good starting point. And ultimately, if you end up looking for a job as a CMO, which usually pays more than a primary care clinical position with about 20% less commitment of time each week, that's an awesome job. Payments for CMOs are quite high. You're going to have to learn about all four of those plus a lot of other things.

And my usual advice for that is go to the AAPL, which is the American Association for Physician Leadership. And you can get a lot of those, which it wouldn't hurt to start that now while you're doing these other jobs or thinking about doing these other jobs. And they do have some specific courses, actually, at the AAPL, which are kind of introductions to the areas we're talking about today.

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The post Pursue One of These Part Time Nonclinical Hospital Jobs appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

The Interesting Life of the Chief Information Officer – 092

John Jurica — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 11:45:02 +0000

Interview with Dr. Christopher Leonard – Conclusion

Today we have the conclusion to my interview with chief information officer Christopher Leonard. The stage was set in Part 1. In this conclusion, Chris explains:

how medical informatics has evolved,
whether to pursue an advanced degree, and,
how to enter this growing field.

What Is Informatics?

Chris was intrigued by the way information and technology could help solve problems for physicians and patients. He explains that the standard definition if “informatics” is “information science concerned with the dissemination and analysis of medical or patient data via applications of technology.”

Meaningful Use Requirements Spur Growth in Informatics

As a result of the Economic Stimulus Act, money was directed to the Meaningful Use program, which incentivized hospitals and doctors to adopt technology. “It was very clunky, but its intentions were obviously very good.”

Chief Information Officer Christopher Leonard, D.O.

One goal was to increase efficiency. Patients would not need to constantly repeat their medical history. Instead, patients’ medical records would be accessible to physicians, and totally secure and protected.

It also spurred the integration of quality measures into the electronic medical record. This would allow for tracking and improving performance.

“Well, that's the utopia part of it, right? But how do you make this happen? Imagine a hospital system in 2011. You had 200 disparate systems all over the place, trying to interact and communicate with each other.”

“Imagine the size and scope of that problem. While everyone expedited their implementation of EHR systems… you had implementation teams and CIOs that are used to more operational problems. And now you had EHRs being introduced to the mix.”

“Informatics is basically the fusion of medicine at all its different levels with technology… But technology can't be a solution in and of itself. When we implement an EHR, we're going to have implementers… trainers…physician champions… We're accumulating a bunch of data. Now, we need data analytics.”

Announcing a New Career Course

I recently released my first formal career course How to Secure a Career as a Medical Science Liaison.

It’s designed to take you from where you are in your career, to your first job as an MSL in the growing pharmaceutical industry. This is a very popular, full-time, entry-level position in pharma.

I chose to focus on this career because it's open to both licensed and unlicensed physicians. I’ve taken everything I know and pulled it together in one place. As a result, the course will enable you to navigate the process quickly. You'll be better able to find available jobs, submit your resume, and ace your interviews.

The course is now open. It will be closed for enrollment soon. And the current price is the LOWEST price at which it will ever be offered.

To learn more, at no obligation, go to vitalpe.net/mslcourse. This could be your best chance to find that new nonclinical career you’ve been seeking.

Managing Mobile Device Systems and Maintaining Security

As data accumulates, so do security concerns. “What about people who walk into the hospital with their cell phones and want to log into the EHR? How will it be managed?”

“That's just the tip of the iceberg. You've got physicians treating patients. They need a tool to document that. In that tool is clinical decision support, which provides them point-of-care information and guidelines that they can look at, flags for reminders, (and) triggers like all the things you would imagine technology would help with.”

Informatics is basically the fusion of medicine at all its different levels with technology.
Christopher Leonard

Our Corporate Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country, with over 650 graduates. Unlike other programs, which typically run 1 – 1/2 to 2 years, this program only takes a year to complete. And Economist Magazine recently ranked the business school #1 in the world for the Most Relevant Executive MBA.

University of Tennessee PEMBA students bring exceptional value to their organizations. While in the program, you'll participate in a company project, thereby contributing to your organization.

Graduates have taken leadership positions at major healthcare organizations. And they've become entrepreneurs and business owners.

By joining the University of Tennessee physician executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to advance your career. To find out more, with no obligation, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office by calling (865) 974-6526 or go to vitalpe.net/physicianmba.

Becoming Chief Information Officer

Here's Chris' advice on seeking a career in informatics (and eventually chief information officer (CIO) or chief medical information officer (CMIO)).

Engage a mentor. One way is to find like-minded people through LinkedIn. “These people are usually natural educators. They like to talk, they're passionate about what they do.”

Get involved at your organization. Look for opportunities wherever technology is being used to improve patient care or streamline a process.

And don't be sidetracked by thinking that moving out of patient care in some way is a “waste” of your medical education and clinical experience.

“There's discouragement sometimes, of going into a field where it seems like there's no clinical implications and your previous years of sacrifice are ‘wasted.’ It's never wasted. There's always context that you'll know that is just not attainable other than having gone through that clinical experience.”

In Summary

This 2-part series was a fairly comprehensive look at medical informatics. I was surprised to learn that there are so many new areas of specialization within the field. And that means that the opportunities in informatics are exploding.

You can download a transcript of the interview by clicking the blue button above. The transcript will include both Parts 1 and 2, so it will be twice as long as the usual download.

Check Out This New Career Course

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve created a brand-new course that will show you how to pursue a career as a medical science liaison. You can learn more about it by going to vitalpe.net/mslcourse. But don’t delay, I’m closing the course soon.

Links for today's episode:

Thanks to our sponsor…

Thanks to the UT Physician Executive MBA program for sponsoring the show. It’s an outstanding, highly rated, MBA program designed for working physicians. It might be just what you need to prepare for that joyful, well-paying career. You can find out more at vitalpe.net/physicianmba.

I hope to see you next time on the PNC Podcast.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, share it on Twitter and Facebook, and leave a review on iTunes.

Disclaimers:

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. It should not be construed as medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counsellor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career.

Right click here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Here are the easiest ways to listen:

vitalpe.net/itunes or vitalpe.net/stitcher

The post The Interesting Life of the Chief Information Officer – 092 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

How to Exploit the Opportunities in Medical Informatics – 091

John Jurica — Tue, 28 May 2019 18:06:28 +0000

Interview with Dr. Christopher Leonard

Dr. Christopher Leonard is the CIO at a physician management company, where he leveraged several opportunities in medical informatics. He now leads the team that designs and develops a proprietary EHR.

Christopher is a graduate of the University of Georgia, Kansas City School of Osteopathic Medicine. He completed his general surgery residency at the Medical College of Georgia, and Master's in Health Informatics at Northwestern University.

After transitioning from general surgery to health informatics, he focused on raising care quality by bringing data analytics and machine learning to post-acute care.

In today's interview, Chris provides a view into his transition from satisfied general surgeon to Chief Information Officer. And he gets into the details regarding what informatics is, and how it has evolved since he over the years. Finally, he lays out how he would approach a career in medical informatics, if he were starting out today.

Announcing a New Career Course

Today's show has two sponsors. The first is my Nonclinical Career Academy, and its first paid course called How to Secure a Career as a Medical Science Liaison.

It’s designed to take you from wherever you are in your career, to your first job as an MSL in the growing pharmaceutical industry. This is a very popular, full-time, entry-level position in pharma.

I chose to focus on this career, because I’ve heard your requests for information on this topic. And because it's a career that is open to both licensed and unlicensed physicians.

So, I’ve taken everything I know from speaking with MSLs and physician career coaches, and studying and researching the field, and pulled it all together in this one place. As a result, this course will enable you to navigate the process quickly, and prepare you to find available jobs, submit your resume, and ace your interviews.

I’m opening this course up this week – the final week of May and first week of June. It will be closed for enrollment on Saturday, June 29. And the current price is the LOWEST price at which it will ever be offered.

To learn more, at no obligation, go to vitalpe.net/mslcourse. This could be your best chance to find that new nonclinical career you’ve been looking for. Again, that’s at vitalpe.net/mslcourse.

Combining Skill Sets: From Musician to Medical School to CIO

Let’s get back to my interview with Dr. Christopher Leonard. Before going into medicine, he came from a creative background. “I liked science, but I also liked art. I was a musician, and I wrote music and plays, did theater work…a vast array of creative things. Those kinds of things, even in science, are often very applicable” to an eventual career.

Chris attended the Kansas City School of Osteopathic Medicine. “I wanted to do something that wasn't just solely restricted to the lab and academics. I definitely wanted to have social engagement, and that's where the combination of skill sets came in.”

Subsequently, he did a general surgery residency at the Medical College of Georgia. Chris enjoyed the camaraderie and operational aspects.

“I enjoyed the education I got there. They wanted us to understand nutrition and medicine. The most important thing they used to say was: ‘Learn how to not operate.’ It was really about judgment, rather than just operative skills.”

Despite the teamwork, an “us vs. them” mentality still existed: “The doctors in the trenches doing clinical work vs. the administration. One side doesn't always appreciate what the other side has to deal with, and the necessities of the other side. I remember that specifically because I ended up in administration.”

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

University of Tennessee PEMBA students bring exceptional value to their organizations. While in the program, you'll participate in a company project, thereby contributing to your organization.

Graduates have taken leadership positions at major healthcare organizations. And they've become entrepreneurs and business owners.

Processes, Protocols, and Paperwork

Physicians have to deal with protocols. “A lot of things are protocol. So, why spend your creative energy on…parts of things that should be protocol?”

When Chris went to a rural hospital to practice, he revamped almost every process to improve efficiency. “Through residency, when you see the same things over and over again, like a gallbladder or potential cholecystitis, you have sort of a routine in your head. Wherever there's a distinction, you make note of it.”

By revising those processes, Chris was already doing administrative operational and process work. “It didn't quite click that I was naturally prone to that. I kind of did it as a big bang. I went in and changed everything.”

However, not everyone was appreciative of his efforts. “Sometimes, that ruffles feathers. It's not like I was changing it for everyone else, but people say, ‘We've been doing it this way for a long time. Who are you to come in and change these kinds of things?’”

The curriculum in that informatics degree was very much in line with all the problems I was facing. I realized, ‘Wow, there's a science behind every one of these little nuances.'
Christopher Leonard

As he kept identifying new issues to address, he decided to look into getting more training. Looking at the Northwestern University master's degree in health informatics, he found that the curriculum addressed everything he was trying to accomplish with data retrieval and analysis, and process improvement. So he signed up and began the program, and loved it.

Opportunities in Medical Informatics Keep Arriving

People notice when you look at processes and make suggestions. “You see problems… get involved…solve those problems. That will naturally open up opportunities for you for that next step, whether it's in management or getting involved in quality or safety.”

For Chris, the trigger that changed his non-clinical thinking into process-oriented thinking was sharing ideas and suggestions. “I was very enthusiastic and I think they saw that interest in the innovative way that we could go about things and process change. I had lots of ideas I fed back to them.”

Voicing your thoughts and opinions can be risky and you're going to have to do extra work to make something simpler. But it's usually worth it. And demonstrating you're interest and ability to solve problems will make you attractive to employers and supervisors. Problem solving is a valuable superpower!

In Summary

Chris’ story is so compelling and interesting to me. I appreciate that he enjoyed his work as a general surgeon. However, he was naturally drawn to standardizing and improving care. And as he developed solutions to address those concerns, informatics became the obvious solution.

I’ll be presenting Part 2 of this interview next week. And it continues with the story of how Chris pursued his interest in informatics, acquired more pertinent skills, and eventually became CIO of his practice.

He also gets into how informatics has evolved, and the common roles that he sees currently. Finally, he then gets into some detail about how to pursue an informatics career in today’s environment, and to identify opportunities in medical informatics.

You can find a transcript of the interview, by going to the clicking on the blue button above. The transcript will include both Parts 1 and 2, so it will be twice as long as the usual download.

Check Out This New Career Course

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve created a brand-new course that will show you the process for pursuing a career as a medical science liaison. You can learn more about it by going to vitalpe.net/mslcourse. But don’t delay, I’m closing the course on June 29.

Links for today's episode:

Thanks to our sponsor…

I hope to see you next time on the PNC Podcast.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, share it on Twitter and Facebook, and leave a review on iTunes.

Disclaimers:

Right click here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Here are the easiest ways to listen:

vitalpe.net/itunes – vitalpe.net/stitcher

The post How to Exploit the Opportunities in Medical Informatics – 091 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Three Awesome Nonclinical Careers You Can Embark on Today – 034

John Jurica — Tue, 08 May 2018 14:35:48 +0000

Today we learn about three awesome nonclinical careers for those working in the hospital setting.

But first, a story…

Ten years into my career as a full-time family physician, I began to consider moving in another direction. For the most part, I enjoyed my practice, and my patients liked me. My two partners and I had busy schedules and a waiting list for appointments.

And we had a good reputation in the community.

But I wanted something more. I enjoyed working on hospital committees. I relished collaborating with nurses, pharmacists and other professionals, to create new protocols that improved patient care. And I enjoyed assessing learning needs and planning CME activities for my colleagues.

When the first wave of managed care plans began to show up in our community, I found it invigorating to work with eleven of my colleagues to help develop an independent physician association. The goal of the IPA was to contract with insurers, develop our own patient panels, and manage our utilization.

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

I began to think that I might pursue a career in hospital management.

Self-Limiting Fears

But I had so many fears and insecurities that surfaced with each small step I took in that direction:

How would I explain this to my partners? We shared everything equally in the practice. How could I find time to still cover all of the call responsibilities and ease into a management position?

I’m a family physician. Sure, it’s a noble calling. But surgeons, cardiologists, gynecologists, and other specialists really don’t respect our opinions. We’re treated like the proverbial “red-headed stepchild.” And our hospital had never had a physician executive, so I was sure my peers would be very skeptical of the idea.

I thought, if I move into management, I’ll need to interact with other physicians, and even lead them. What makes me think I can be a leader? I’m not charismatic. I’m an introvert. I don’t have a booming voice or any “gravitas.” For goodness sake, I’m only 5 feet 3 inches tall!

And, I could hear my brothers and sisters, maybe even my parents, saying: “What do you mean, you won’t be seeing patients any more? Why would you give up being a doctor? Why waste your medical education?”

This is just a sampling of the self-limiting beliefs I had to overcome. And with the encouragement of my close friends, and wonderful mentors and supporters, including the CEO that first hired me as VP for Medical Affairs, I slowly faced those fears.

Fears Unfounded

And I discovered that those fears were unfounded. I learned that having a good reputation in the community was important. Being meticulous in my work and committed to improving patient outcomes was appreciated. And serving my colleagues by facilitating a dialogue between hospital executives or board members and the medical staff was what mattered.

As I present a plan today for you to follow, I want to acknowledge that you’ll likely face similar self-doubts and limiting beliefs. But don’t let those stop you.

Your clinical experience is the platform upon which you can build a rewarding career. You just need to add a bit of additional expertise and nonclinical experience.

You’ll likely be helping more patients in your new career. And you’ll be supporting your community and advancing your profession.

Three Awesome Nonclinical Careers

I’m going to briefly outline the steps that will take you from practicing physician to Physician Advisor for Utilization Review, Medical Informaticist, or Physician Advisor for Clinical Documentation Improvement.

Click above to download free guide.

These awesome nonclinical careers are ideal for many hospital-based physicians, including hospitalists, anesthesiologists, infectious disease specialists, and pulmonologists.

Each of these can be started part-time, if you like. But they will readily become a full-time career. They can also serve as a stepping stone to more highly paid positions as medical director, CMIO, or CMO.

Much of the information I’m going to share can be found in a free guide titled 5 Nonclinical Careers You Can Pursue Today. This guide can be downloaded for free by going to vitalpe.net/freeguide and signing up for my newsletter.

For the rest of this episode, you might want to have pen and paper handy. I’m going to provide many resources for you to access.

Utilization Management

This field is also sometimes called case management or care management. A physician advisor for UM will help determine the appropriate care status (outpatient vs. inpatient) in the hospital. As a PA for UM, you may be asked to determine appropriateness for observation care. You will work with other team members to determine if continued stay is warranted.

You’ll also help physicians understand CMS and other payer rules with respect to appropriateness of testing and performing invasive procedures. As a UM advisor, you’ll help your colleagues appropriately document their thought processes so that their patients can get the care that they need.

Finally, your work will be critical to the financial viability and the reported quality outcomes of your organization, by helping to reduce risk adjusted length of stay and unnecessary readmissions.

To begin to seek this career, you generally must be residency trained, and board certified, with 3 or more years of clinical experience. It is easiest to begin this transition if you’re currently a medical staff member at a medium to large hospital with an existing Utilization Management Department.

Typical Job Listing Looks Like This

“Candidate will have a strong clinical background with excellent communication skills and leadership abilities. The role of the Physician Advisor of Case Management Services requires the review of other physicians' cases, their plan of care and resource utilization. Case study can be necessary for various reasons including patient outliers (extended stays), utilization review issues, reimbursement issues or quality concerns. The Physician Advisor will work with hospital administration and clinical committees as requested to develop processes and guidelines to improve quality of care and value.”

Get Started

Here are some actions you can take to begin this career journey. They don’t necessarily need to be taken in the following order.

Purchase and read: The Hospital Guide to Contemporary Utilization Review, by Stefani Daniels and Ronald Hirsch, and Physician Advisor Handbook, by Pooja Nagpal and Ven Mothkur.
Meet with the Director for Utilization (or Case) Management and identify the most active physicians and the committees where the work is generally done.
Then join your hospital utilization or case management committee. Get involved with denials management, including appeals.
Identify a mentor that is currently working in utilization review, possibly the current Medical Director or a Physician Advisor for UM or case management. Establish a relationship and a dialogue about pursuing a similar career.
Create a complete LinkedIn profile with a focus on experience in quality and length of stay, and on clinical experiences with hospital care.
Consider joining the American College of Physician Advisors (acpadvisors.org) or the National Association of Physician Advisors (physicianadvisors.org). Check out their websites and see which one resonates most with you.
You might consider attending the Annual SEAK Nonclinical Careers Conference held in Chicago, Illinois each October. There is usually at least one presentation devoted to this role.
You should look into the costs and time commitment needed to achieve certification in Health Care Quality and Management by the American Board of Quality Assurance and Utilization Review Physicians, the ABQAURP (abqaurp.org)
Finally, to learn more, listen to my interview with Dr. Timothy Owolabi in Episode # 12 of this podcast by going to My Interview with Dr. Timothy Owolabi.

Before proceeding, I want to spend a minute talking about the American Association for Physician Leadership. I’m not an affiliate and receive no compensation for this endorsement. But I’ve been a proud member of the AAPL for about 25 years, because it’s an outstanding organization.

It helps to support and promote physicians as managers, executives and leaders. The AAPL provides live conferences, online education, books, coaching, mentoring, career services and nonclinical job postings. It also provides physician executive certification, the CPE, that demonstrates expertise and skills as a physician leader.

I’ve mentioned the AAPL in numerous podcast episodes and interviewed the Director of Career Services, Dian Ginsberg, in Episode 24.

It truly is the world’s leading organization of emerging and established physician leaders. The cost of annual membership is a little less than $300.00 per year, which is a ridiculously low price. I strongly recommend you consider joining. Check It out using this link – vitalpe.net/aapl – to find out more.

Medical Informatics

Physicians in this position will need to learn about information technology and informatics. Medical informatics is the study of the design, development, adoption and application of IT-based innovations in healthcare services delivery, management and planning.

As a physician informaticist, you will be the bridge between information technology and practicing physicians. You will be involved in converting clinical protocols for use in an EHR. And you will develop procedures for effective use of technology in health delivery. This is probably the fastest growing of these awesome nonclinical careers.

To pursue this career, you should generally be residency trained and board certified, with 5 or more years of clinical experience.

Typical Job Listing Looks Like This

“The primary purpose of the Physician Informaticist is to develop EMR application training in one on one and group settings for physicians, based on workflow analysis and evaluation. The Physician Informaticist will develop and deliver learning solutions that improve efficiency and promote business objectives. As a member of the Clinical Informatics team, this person will provide ongoing support of EMR products and will work with the team in the maintenance and enhancement of EMR software. He/she will help implement requests for system changes on all assigned modules and participate in the development of operational workflow.”

Get Started

Here are some steps you can take to begin this career journey.

Purchase and read: Health Informatics: Practical Guide for Healthcare and Information Technology Professionals by Robert E. Hoyt (Editor).
Meet with the Director or VP for Informatics and identify the most active physicians and the committees.
Participate in IT or EHR committees in your hospital.
Identify a non-physician mentor that’s currently working in the Medical Informatics Department, or a medical informaticist or the Chief Medical Informatics Officer, if one exists. Meet with them and learn more about seeking a career in informatics.
Create a complete LinkedIn profile with a focus on experience in EMR implementation, application, protocol development, etc.
You should check out the following organizations: The American Medical Informatics Association is devoted to informatics and has a substantial physician component; The American Health Information Management Association addresses coding, privacy, security, data analytics, and CDI, in addition to informatics. It has a smaller focus on physician members.
You should subscribe to the Health Data Management Online Journal at healthdatamanagement.com for news related to healthcare information technology.
Join the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society or HIMSS. And then check out the Physician Community within HIMSS at himss.org/physician.
You can learn even more about this career choice by listening to my interview with Brian Young in Episode #14 by going to My Interview with Dr. Brian Young.

Clinical Documentation Improvement

Physicians in this position will need to learn appropriate coding and documentation guidelines and teach other physicians about coding. You will likely need to interact with them on specific cases to make appropriate changes to coding when needed.

As coding guidelines have become more specific, the need for an expert in this field continues to grow. As a CDI expert, you will help to ensure that the severity of illness of hospitalized patients is fully demonstrated.

This is critical to proper risk adjustment and quality outcomes published by CMS and other quality reporting organizations (Truven Top 100 and HealthGrades, for example).

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Like the Physician Advisor for Utilization Management, your work will be critical to the financial viability your organization. You accomplish this by helping to optimize payments, reduce CMS-imposed penalties and demonstrate the quality of care to your stakeholders.

You’ll need to be residency trained, and board certified, with 3 to 5 or more years of clinical experience.

Typical Job Listing Looks Like This

“As the CDI physician advisor, you will act as a liaison between other CDI professionals, the Health Information Management Department, and the hospital’s medical staff. The PA will facilitate accurate and complete documentation for coding and abstracting of clinical data, in order to capture severity, acuity and risk of mortality, in addition to DRG assignment.”

Get Started

Here are some of the steps you can take, not necessarily in this order:

You can read manuals such as Understanding Hospital Billing and Coding, 3rd Edition or DRG Expert – 2015.
Better yet, you can go to the CMS page with DRG data at CMS Website and download the most recent DRG dataset in Excel format and sort by volume to see the most common DRGs being used nationally. Then you can look up the definitions of individual high-volume MS-DRGs at this link on the CMS website
Meet with the Director or VP for Health Information Management and the Director of Clinical Documentation and identify the most active physicians and the committees.
If possible, join the CDI team and attend CDI committee meetings. Spend time with the coding specialists in the Hospital Information Management Department.
Identify a mentor that is currently working in hospital clinical documentation improvement.
Create a complete LinkedIn profile with a focus on documentation and coding experience.
Consider joining the Association of Clinical Documentation Specialists. It has a significant physician membership.
The American Academy of Professional Coders may also have some useful educational and networking opportunities.
The American College of Physician Advisors and the National Association of Physician Advisors might be useful to you. AHIMA may be more helpful for the CDI specialist than for the physician advisor for utilization management.
And you can learn even more about this career choice by listening to my interview with Cesar Limjoco in Episode #5 by going to My Interview with Dr. Cesar Limjoco.

Closing

Well, there you go. I tried to provide actionable information and inspiration for three very important and popular nonclinical careers.

Let's close with this quote:

If you have any questions about what has been presented, please email me directly at johnjurica@nonclinical.buzzmybrand.net.

You can get the written overview of these three careers and two others by signing up for my newsletter at vitalpe.net/freeguide.

Resources

The resources mentioned in this episode are all linked below.

[table id=25 /]

Right click here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

The easiest ways to listen: vitalpe.net/itunes or vitalpe.net/stitcher

If you'd like to listen to the premier episode and show notes, you can find it here: Getting Acquainted with Physician NonClinical Careers Podcast – 001

The post Three Awesome Nonclinical Careers You Can Embark on Today – 034 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Reasons to Pursue a Career in Medical Informatics – Interview with Dr. Brian Young – 014

Elizabeth Rink — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 12:15:40 +0000

In this podcast episode, I speak with Dr. Brian Young about medical informatics.

He is an Enterprise Physician Informaticist with Dignity Health, a 38-hospital system with sites in California, Nevada and Arizona.

Brian received his medical training at Wake Forest, a master's degree in predictive analytics at Northwestern University, and his MBA from the University of Cincinnati.

He is a credentialed Epic trainer and has been involved with multiple implementations in both inpatient and outpatient environments.

I heard Brian speak at the annual SEAK conference on Nonclinical Careers for Physicians in October. I found his presentation to be very interesting. The field of informatics is growing quickly and there should be heavy demand for medical informaticists far into the future. But, it's also a field which is rapidly changing.

Here is more information about the work that Brian does as a Physician Informaticist at Dignity Health (from his LinkedIn profile):

“Work in my role aids development of state of the art analytical tools and techniques, which will result in improved financial, clinical and operational analytics with patient experience outcomes.

“I use knowledge of Dignity Health’s informatics infrastructure, analytical tools, information systems, and other data stores to construct analytical models to support operational and clinical analyses, and help develop a model of self- service reporting for responsible business units or organizations.

“I research and help design and implement analytical solutions to improve processes, measure clinical quality goals, and develop predictive models for patient and population specific goals.

“Scope of responsibilities includes: setting and managing strategic goals and tactical objectives; project management; and leadership support of Quality Management & Improvement through Health Analytics which includes but is not limited to predictive models, data-mining, forecasting and model optimization. Relies on expert judgment to plan, execute and achieve goals and objectives, establishes and monitors customer service levels.”

Medical Informatics

Here are some of the topics we covered during our conversation:

Describe Informatics. What does it mean to be a medical- or physician-informaticist?
What do you like about informatics?
How has your role evolved over time?
What are the most common opportunities for physicians in this field?
What are the characteristics of a good physician informaticist?
How would you advise a physician who is interested in career transition to this field?
- Associations to join?
- Courses to take?
- Journals to follow?
- Certifications or degrees? How necessary are they?
Will the salary equal that of a clinical position?

In Closing

That’s it for today’s episode. We hit on many aspects of medical informatics. I found Brian’s story quite inspirational.

My next episode will be a conversation with an interesting physician leadership coach. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on the Apple Podcast App and sign up for my newsletter so you don't miss it, using the form below.

[embed_popupally_pro popup_id=”3″]

And join me next time on Physician Nonclinical Careers.

Here is a list of resources mentioned in this episode:

[table id=14 /]

If you liked today’s episode please tell your friends about it and SHARE it on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Right click here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

The post Reasons to Pursue a Career in Medical Informatics – Interview with Dr. Brian Young – 014 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.