Are you looking for a career change with a path to employment in healthcare? Consider becoming a Medical Secretary. Technical advances, the pressure to contain escalating costs, chronic conditions, and an aging population are requiring more medical services, driving an increasing demand for medical secretaries and medical assistants alike. That increased demand makes it the right time to earn your credentials and step up to a stable career with a sustainable income – while providing service to your community.
ASPIRA City College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, offers a career-driven Medical Secretary program, both online and on-campus, to prepare students for success working in physicians’ offices, hospitals, outpatient clinics, and other healthcare facilities. Here, we give more details on the forces driving the growth in demand for our Medical Secretary graduates.
Why Is Healthcare Growing?
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “employment in healthcare occupations is projected to grow 15 percent from 2019 to 2029, much faster than the average for all occupations, adding about 2.4 million new jobs. Healthcare occupations are projected to add more jobs than any of the other occupational groups.” The key reasons for growth in the healthcare industry include:
- A growing population: The U.S. population was approximately 329 million in 2019, and experts expect it to grow to 359.4 million by 2030. This growth means a greater need for healthcare.
- Aging generations: The Baby Boomer generation, currently over 21% of the U.S. population and 73 million strong, is aging. The demographic shift is now a “gray tsunami” with Boomer age-related medical needs increasing healthcare services demands – and that includes higher demand for skilled medical secretaries.
- Chronic conditions: Incurable chronic disease in the U.S. is common and widespread. According to the National Health Counsel, in 2014, chronic diseases affected approximately 133 million Americans, representing more than 40% of the total U.S. population. By 2020, that number rose to an estimated 157 million, with 81 million having multiple conditions. The frequency of chronic health conditions will worsen in the coming decades across all age groups, including children. Those with chronic conditions require ongoing and frequent medical attention, both on an outpatient and in-patient basis. As this number continues to rise, more medical secretaries are needed to ensure administrative operations, such as medical coding and insurance billing, run smoothly.
- Cost containment: Recent advances have led to improvements in technology and new perspectives. Although in-patient hospital services remain high, with rising chronic conditions and the pressure to contain or even reduce cost, we are seeing a shift toward delivering as many medical services as possible in community health centers. Healthcare providers are opening new sites and are hiring people to staff them – including medical secretaries.
An Increased Focus on Technology
Not only is the demand for healthcare workers growing, but healthcare reforms, like the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 and the Affordable Care Act of 2010, place more emphasis on electronic health and medical record keeping. That increased emphasis created new, information-focused roles that had to be filled by specially trained professionals, and healthcare organizations are still adjusting today.
Medical secretaries, administrators, coordinators, and record specialists are vital to ensuring healthcare operations run smoothly. They manage health and insurance records, coordinate appointments electronically, interview patients, handle medical coding and billing, process payments, and more –healthcare providers can’t function without them. The training ASPIRA City College provides covers the recent trends for medical secretaries’ job skills, such as skills in ICD-10 medical codes for billing, to ensure graduates are ready to meet employer expectations as they begin their new careers.
Become a Medical Secretary with ASPIRA City College on Your Side
Become a medical secretary to take your place in healthcare now. Based in Philadelphia and offering online and on-campus learning, ASPIRA City College provides the short-term career training program you can complete in just nine months to gain the knowledge, skill, and confidence you need for career entry and a brighter future. Contact us to learn more about our Medical Secretary program.
