Healthcare temps traditionally include not just hospital and nursing home employees, but also the people who staff doctors' offices, clinics, and healthcare companies. The temp staff can include anyone from the receptionist to the hospital administrator and from the physician's assistant to the doctor. Medical support staff includes those who file insurance claims with Medicare and those who do the credit and collections. Then there is the traditional medical staff the doctors or physicians, nurses, lab technicians, physician's assistants, and nurse practitioners.
In the next few years as hospital management companies and insurance companies exert more and more dominance over health maintenance organizations (HMOs), preferred provider organizations (PPOs), and medical practice, an increasing number of doctors, registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and physician's assistants are expected to seek out staffing services to enhance their employment. This means more opportunity for those in the medical profession to earn a living as a professional temp or to use temping as a means to find a full time job in healthcare.
The present and future trend for medical practice and delivery of healthcare services is to utilize the HMO and PPO concepts. The central focus of these types of organizations is to provide quality medical services while conserving and limiting the monetary costs.
Thus, HMOs are essentially groups of doctors, hospitals, and medical practitioners who have formed an organizational alliance to increase their financial power and to maximize their economies of scale.
Because an HMO represents a large number of healthcare providers it can achieve reductions in costs, discounts, and other savings. Of course, HMOs usually mean more depersonalized medical services for the individual patient because of the HMO size and organizational complexity (especially as compared to a family doctor who has treated the same patients their entire lives). At an HMO you may see a different doctor on every visit.
Preferred provider organizations can result in a similar loss of individualized care when a health care plan requires an individual to use only a doctor or clinic of his or her PPO. Oftentimes this means patients will be treated by a doctor and/or nurse that they do not know.
What does this mean for the staffing industry? The greatest increase of the next generation of temps may very well be doctors, nurses, and backroom or non office support medical staff. Healthcare practitioners have the opportunity to move from one practice to another to another without hindrance, as the nature of these healthcare services is changing. Patients of HMOs and PPOs no longer expect to personally know their doctor or nurse, and therefore an entirely new employment market is in the process of being created.
There is a growing need for the traditional front office staff, which includes office support. Those technical and professional temps with knowledge of healthcare claims for billing purposes will have a very good chance of finding temporary and permanent employment. The need for accountants and auditors is growing quickly in the healthcare industry. With new regulations from the government and a growing complexity in billing to patients and reimbursements to doctors and hospitals, a healthcare accountant and auditor are not a luxury but a necessity.
Matthew is one of the many people who are turning to the healthcare industry as a way to use their accounting skills. He earned his degree in accounting six years ago from a university and went to work for a state government agency. While Matthew was working for the state agency he studied for his CPA exam. He even passed three parts of the exam.
After six years, a new governor was elected on his promise to downsize and decrease the number of people on the government payroll in Matthew's state. One of the ways the governor did this was to merge several state agencies together to form a new department. Matthew had supported the new governor, and like many other state employees assumed his job was secure and went on about his daily business.
Imagine how stunned Matthew was one Friday afternoon when his supervisor called him in to tell him his position was being eliminated when the agencies merged. Matthew was given two weeks' severance pay and told to have a nice life. Matthew had no idea what to do next. There he was, in his early thirties. He only knew he wanted to avoid the same type of government position he had tried before.
When Matthew was employed by the state, he always listened to the radio on the way to work, and he remembered hearing commercials for staffing services that placed accountants on jobs. Matthew had never considered temping. He thought it was only for secretaries, not accountants. Matthew also knew he had nothing to lose and he needed immediate income.
So, Matthew signed up with several staffing services that specialized in placing accountants on jobs. Matthew accepted a six month assignment at a hospital through one of the services. He was paid $14.58 an hour.
While temping there, Matthew received on the job training in the accounting procedures for Medicare reimbursement. There are a lot of tedious procedures to billing patients and making sure the doctors and hospitals are reimbursed by the government. Matthew was able to take the knowledge he gained in this temp position and upgrade his skills. He even used this time to pass the other part of the CPA exam so that he became a certified public accountant. The hospital told the staffing service Matthew was working for that they wanted to hire him. Matthew accepted the position and started out at an annual salary of $44,000.
