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A Crystal Ball for 2008 - Trends in Healthcare Jobs

What trends will define the health care job market? In 2008, these five major factors could affect jobs in this growing field.

Politics: A New President = A New Health Care Plan?

The next administration may well usher in a new national healthcare plan, although it could take even more years of political debate before a new plan in enacted. Healthcare administrators are sure to keep busy, whether a new plan passes or not, since this is already one of the fastest growing fields.

How This Affects Jobs:
Health care information will continue to need to be well organized and studied. Health administration and health informatics should be hot.

• Health Administration
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• Health Informatics and IT
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Globalization: As The World Turns

Already, China’s built a strong foundation for stem cell therapy, unavailable in the U.S. Western couples are outsourcing baby-bearing to Indian women serving as surrogate mothers. Medical and dental tourism are widely advertised online. And in the opposite direction, Filipino doctors are immigrating to the U.S. to become nurses, draining the Asian country of needed medical expertise. Nursing aides and home healthcare staff are already diverse and rely heavily upon immigrants. This trend will continue, especially since more than 1 million new home health and other aides are predicted to be needed by the year 2016.

How This Affects Jobs:
Language skills on the job will help more and more. Bilingual workers may have an edge. Health aides will increasingly be immigrants. Medical administrator to manage the burgeoning armies of aides and interpreters will be in high demand.

• Health Administration
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• Medical Interpreters
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Digital Tools to Train, Diagnose and Treat

Virtual digital visualizations provide more and more training for surgeons and other health professions. Witness the SimuLab, developed at the University of Washington and featured recent episodes of the hit television series Grey’s Anatomy.

How do doctors know how to treat your condition? Increasingly, health informatics experts crunch numbers to guide physicians toward what’s proven to work in diagnosis and treatment, relying increasingly upon evidence-based medicine. The wide variation in treatments will come under increasing scrutiny from managed care providers but informatics, intelligently applied, could lead to better outcomes.

Med tech’s biggest impacts however are in treatment. More and more surgery will be done at lower cost and in out patient clinics instead of hospitals as med tech makes more procedures easier and less invasive to perform – and reduces costs and recovery times.

How This Affects Jobs:
Physician assistants and health IT should be in demand increasingly. Lab technicians will be in high demand, along with the technicians to keep all these out patient surgical support and diagnostic tools humming.

• Physician Assistants
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• Lab Technicians
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• Health Informatics
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• Med Technicians
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Labyrinthine Bureaucracies Spawn a New Profession

Taxes and the IRS fuel the field of tax preparation and provide ample work for tax attorneys and tax accountants. Wrangling with health insurers is becoming so complicated and so odious that a new profession is emerging – that of patient advocate. With the increasing number of baby boomers, more and more children of aging adults will choose to manage the care of their elderly parents or other loved ones with experts who specialize in this field.

How This Affects Jobs:
Look for the new category of patient advocates to rise, rise, rise.

• Patient Advocates
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Inside Your DNA

Though still on the horizon, personalized medicine promises to become more of a reality. Perhaps you’ve heard of the new genetics company, 23 And Me, which will decode some of your DNA for $1,000 to help you better predict your chances of getting various conditions. Jobs in genetics will continue to fuel employment for genetic researchers and technicians.

How This Affects Jobs:
Biotech researchers, genetic counselors and other lab tech in genetics will continue to expand.

•Genetic Counselors
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Boomers, Boomers Everywhere

As the baby boomers retire, the shortage of both nurses and aides will create new kinds of nursing homes and elder care. Assisted living will expand, along with the need for massage and physical therapy. Since the elderly consume most drugs, pharmacists will als o be in high demand. Alternative medicine careers may also grow rapidly along with other high-touch forms of medicine.

How This Affects Jobs:
Nursing home administration will grow rapidly along with physical therapy, acupuncture and pharmacist jobs.

• Healthcare Administration
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• Massage Therapy
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• Pharmacists
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