Manage My Practice

So you’ve been trying to become employed in healthcare, or you’ve tried to enter healthcare management, or you’re trying to move from one job in healthcare to another.  You’ve read my post about my search for a job in healthcare and have been soldiering on, but you’re just not getting anywhere.  You might have education, but no experience or you might have experience but no formal education.

Healthcare is no different from any other field.  It’s a hodgepodge of what you know and who you know.  What everyone is looking for is expertise and authority and that can’t always be demonstrated by a degree or years of experience.  A new buzz phrase is “What is your value proposition?” or “How will you pay for your salary and make me (doctor, practice, hospital, health plan) money besides?”

If you want to enter the field or climb the ladder in healthcare management, you need to demonstrate that you have something of value that someone wants.  Try some non-traditional ways of gaining expertise and demonstrating value, like the ones I list here.  Yes, each of these will take time in addition to your current job, but it has the potential to give you a hand up to your next job.  If you don’t currently have a job, you have lots of time to work on the list below, and when potential employers ask what you’ve been doing while unemployed, you have a great answer!

1. Blog about the field you want to enter – learn about the field and write about it.
2. Write about being in the middle of a transitional field and your experiences along the way – if you’re a compelling writer, I’ll publish it as a series on my blog!
3. Create a site of resources for others that already do what you want to do.
4. Interview others in the field you want to enter and publish the interviews.
5. Ask people if you can shadow them for one day or a half day to understand what they do to see if you’re on the right track (who would say “no”? I wouldn’t.)
6. If you haven’t used voice recognition, invest in a basic copy of Dragon and learn it inside and out.
7. Learn how electronic health records (EHRs) work.  If you’ve never used one, gain experience by finding someone who has one and volunteer your time to write a user’s guide for them, or to use their user’s guide and critique it for them. Do that for as many different EHRs as you can find.
8. Think creatively about jobs in a department you want to be in, just not in the job you want to be in – call temp agencies, computer schools, software companies, any healthcare entity going through a conversion, etc.
9. Tell everyone (if you’re free to talk about it) what you’re looking for – you never know who might help you find it.
10. Volunteer to do an informal project for someone in the field – some topic they need information about but never have the time to do.
11. Join the American College of Medical Practice Executives (ACMPE) and pursue board certification and become a Fellow in the college.  These credentials are quickly becoming the standard in the field.
12. Get a Google Health account and learn how to use it inside and out.
13. Get a Microsoft Health Vault account and learn how to use it inside and out.
14. Get accounts on any other personal health record (PHR) platform you can find.
15. Publish case studies on common problems in other fields and how they were solved, and apply those solutions to healthcare problems.
16. Put a chart on your resume showing each skill you have and how it transfers to healthcare and brings added value to your potential employer.
17. If you don’t yet, get a Twitter account (free) and start conversations with others in the field.
18. If you don’t yet, get a LinkedIn account (free) and join groups that are talking about the things you want to learn about (Twitter will give you more info and friends, LinkedIn will make you more business connections)
19. If you aren’t already, sign up for websites that focus on what you are interested in, read them religiously and comment on their posts.
20. If you don’t already, get your resume on visualcv.com (still free I think) Add any goodies you can to your visualcv that demonstrate you know your stuff – recommendations, videos, charts, white papers, etc.
21. Find someone to mentor you who is well-positioned (locally, regionally and nationally.)
22. Volunteer to do some pro bono work for your local professional group – your state MGMA, your state medical society, etc.
23. Join Toastmasters and polish your “elevator speech” so you can effortlessly let others know who you are and where you’re heading.
24. Let me know what you plan to do, and how I can help.

Best wishes,

Mary Pat

I wrote this post for the MGMA In Practice Blog and have republished it here for my readers.

I resigned from my job managing an orthopedic group on Jan. 20, 2009, and I remember thinking, Who leaves a job during a recession? Well, I did, and what follows is what I learned on my three-and-a-half month journey to my new position.

1. Visit the MGMA Career Center job search site often. Try different categories and occasionally check categories you don’t think you fit in – you never know. I don’t suggest this because I am writing for the MGMA blog, I suggest it because it is a resource that I believe in.
2. Four state MGMA sites integrate their “jobs boards” with the MGMA Career Center: Colorado, Georgia, New Jersey and Montana. Search other state MGMA sites; some allow non-members to access the job listings.
3. Get a LinkedIn account (free) at LinkedIn.com and complete your profile, connect with colleagues, join groups and start networking. There are healthcare jobs listed exclusively on LinkedIn, as well as an aggregation of jobs listed elsewhere. Joining MGMA’s new LinkedIn group will help expand your network even more.
4. In addition to LinkedIn, be sure to have your expanded resume on the web. MGMA provides a platform for this, as does VisualCV.com (free). I use VisualCV.com because it allows me to include articles I’ve authored, recommendations from former employers and even video. I’ve gotten a number of quality calls from recruiters who saw my expanded resume online.
5. Contact consultants to let them know you are in the market. MGMA has a consulting arm that often places healthcare executives, and you can also search for consultants via the MGMA Member Directory (members only) which at last count numbered about 640.
6. Contact your colleagues and MGMA friends to let them know you’re looking. If you are looking for employment in a particular region or community, contact managers working there and let them know about your search.
7. Look on Craigslist.org. Yes, really! You would be amazed who advertises there.
8. If you expect to relocate, having a home to sell may be a hiring stumbling block because of the housing market. Employers want to know you’ll be available to work when they want you. If you don’t have a home to sell, mention that in your cover letter/e-mail.
9. When you apply for a position, ask the receiver to let you know that your e-mail arrived. If they respond, take the opportunity to respond back, which helps you to stand out from the pack and gives you a name to follow up with in a few weeks by e-mail.
10. There is a pack! Some employers told me they had received more than 200 mostly qualified applications for open positions. How do you stand out in that kind of a crowd? Network, network, network. Find out whether you or someone you know knows someone at the potential employer and work it.  LinkedIn has an excellent system for finding out who you know that works at the employer you are targeting.
11. Join more listservs on the MGMA Member Community (members only). Step outside your current/past specialties and join other professional e-mail lists to listen and contribute to the conversation. Respond when someone talks about a job opening.
12. Talk to recruiters. Recruiters don’t owe you anything, but they are worth including in your search. Get into the minds of a recruiters and see what tactics they’re using on social networking platforms to fill jobs.
13. Don’t spend much time on non-healthcare job boards. The likelihood that you will find the job of your dreams on Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com is low.
14. Don’t be afraid to look for a job on Twitter. This is what I tweeted: “Calling on the Power of Twitter: looking for new job: private (phys) practice mgmt/other healthcare opp. Innovator, Blogger. DM me – Thx.” If you want to jump into Twitter but don’t know what it’s all about, read this post at my blog, Manage My Practice, or MGMA’s Twitter guide. Twitter has recruiters, consultants, employers, job boards and colleagues and is one of the fastest-growing social networks. It can significantly expand your networking scope.
15. Share information with other job seekers in your market. Don’t be afraid to share your leads with others – it’s good networking karma!
16. Two sites I found useful during my job search are CareerAlley.com and Alltop.com. Career Alley is a good all-purpose site with lots of job search information and resources, such as a tracking spreadsheet that helps you document your leads. Alltop is an ever-growing aggregator of other sites – try looking under “jobs” and “careers.”

Remember, the Internet doesn’t replace traditional networking – it supercharges it! The important thing is to get out there and make connections, share information and let people know what value you bring to a practice. Even with all the social networking I did, my opportunity came the old-fashioned way: A colleague and consultant I knew well from the state and regional levels of MGMA recommended me for a job, and here I am. Good luck!

Twitter is a combination of two concepts, social networking and micro-blogging. When combined, they create a fascinating way for people to communicate and keep in touch.  Let’s explore social networking and micro-blogging individually first.

Social Networking

This is the Myspace, and Facebook you’ve heard so much about.  You already know what networking is – you create, build, and maintain personal and professional relationships to meet people, find opportunities, and learn new things.  Successful practice managers are constantly networking to be in the know and stay ahead of the curve.  Now add the social aspect of it to the equation.  Social networking means starting with people you already know, and using that as a jumping off point. Take your existing network of contacts and digitize them to build an on-line community.

Think about your contact list in your address book, email, phone, or Blackberry.  You have everyone in there: colleagues, friends, family.  What if you also had access to the contact lists of everyone in their contact lists?  There would be duplicate entries but there would also be a lot of people in this “friends of friends” list that you didn’t know before.  You would probably see a lot of new names and faces, some of whom you might want to talk to about your organization, their organization, your product, their service, their hobbies, even ask out on a date!

When you walk into a room and see a friend talking to someone you don’t know, you go and say hello to your friend, and introduce yourself to the stranger- you are building your network by social networking!

The differences between various social networking sites (see the MMP post on LinkedIn) will be explored in a later article, but all social networking sites have one thing in common – they are designed to help you meet new people through common friends, interests, pasts, and goals.

Micro-blogging

It’s blogging, but smaller.  But what’s blogging?  ”Blog” is short for “web log”, and it is keeping an online journal of writings, pictures, and other multimedia, as well as news items and content found on the web.  Some blogs are just places where people write about their feelings and activities so other people can read them.  Some blogs are focused on a topic- like ManageMyPractice.com focuses on health care administration.  But all blogs are simply websites that are updated by their authors fairly frequently, around some common theme.

How does blogging become “micro”?  By shrinking it down to its bare essence and relaying the heart of the message, communicating the necessary.  How could this be of use to you?  What if you set up a system where your kids received updates when you were going to be home later than usual from work, telling them they were allowed to have a soda with their homework before TV, and what would be for dinner when you arrived?  Or maybe your kids need to update you when their plans change.  What if all your colleagues were updating each other about the goings-on at a professional conference so they could decide on the fly which events to attend, and share their experiences, and decide where everyone would be meeting afterwards.

Anything that could be helped by contacting an entire group of people quickly with short message could benefit from micro-blogging.

Twitter puts it all together

Twitter takes these two concepts, and merges the whole shebang with your mobile device.  Twitter lets you easily microblog to your social network over your mobile device.  You don’t have to use a cell phone or a Blackberry to use Twitter- you can send and receive updates over the web, and through a variety of third party providers.

If you want to get started, go to the Twitter homepage at www.twitter.com, and click the green button that says “JOIN THE CONVERSATION”.  You will create a username and password, and get you started adding contacts and you’ll soon be able to make your first micro-blog post (they call them “tweets”).

On Twitter, anyone you want to receive updates from is someone you are “following”, and anyone who is receiving your messages is one of your “followers”.  You can also send messages directly to just one user, or set up groups of people to receive certain updates- your co-workers don’t have to see your notes to your kids, and vice-versa. You can also do fun things, like upload a little picture of yourself to be your icon that people wil see when they are on Twitter’s website.

Now it’s time to supercharge your cell phone

But you don’t have to ever go to the site if you don’t want to!  The real power of Twitter is that it can let you do all these short internet communications (micro-blogging) right from your cell phone.  Basic text messages that you may already use on your cell phone (called “SMS messages“) can be used to send and receive messages from Twitter.   Just link your Twitter account to a mobile phone in your Twitter settings, and then you can send your updates as text messages to 40404.  Incoming Twitter messages from the users you follow will show up as incoming texts from Twitter, but with labels to show you which user the update is from.  You can also customize your mobile updates, so you only get messages from certain users. If you follow some people who are heavy updaters, you might get tired of constant alerts of new text messages.  Also be sure you understand your cell phone’s text messaging plan – Twitter is free to use, but if you don’t have unlimited messaging on your phone, it could be easy to run up a big bill.

Once you have your Twitter up and running on your mobile phone things get really interesting, as now you’ve basically turned your cell phone service into an internet chat room. And in terms of business, that gives you near constant connection.  Twitter users are often the first people to know the newest information, and love to post updates about it online.  It’s an interesting way to see what’s new in the world – finding out what people are talking about literally “right then”.  Plus it creates an interesting crowd of which to ask questions: What’s going on tonight?  Can anyone recommend good seafood on the north side of town?  Is anyone getting anything out of this conference?

The brilliance of Twitter is that it so easily connects people on all different types of computers and cell phone platforms.  Twitter can seemlessly create networks of people communicating for mutual benefit, and provides an interesting new way to keep on top and keep in touch.

To Recap:

1. Social Networking = networking with your friends’ friends
2. Micro-blogging = little missives without all the niceties and all the heart
3. Twitter = #1 + #2 (little missives to your friends’ friends’ friends)
4. How can you leverage this technology to make your practice more efficient and productive?

Note from Mary Pat: How can Twitter be used in a medical practice setting?  Here are a few ways – I’m sure you can think of others.  If your doctor is running late, use direct messages to Twitter patients to let them know right away that they can arrive later or reschedule their appointment.  Likewise, when an earlier opening is available, Twitter a patient to see if they could fill your appointment time.  Twitter your doc to let him/her know about schedule changes that would affect what s/he is doing right now.

And to get you started on Twitter, my Twitter name is “mpwhaley.”

What have you done for your career lately?  Are you comfortable in your current job?  Are you happy?  Happy with your income?  Happy with your level of challenge?  What would you do if you lost your job tomorrow?

Do yourself a favor and invest a little time in your future.

At WordCamp recently, Lorelle VonFossen said “You need to think about having a digital presence.”

I suggest that signing up with LinkedIn (free) and building your online presence is a good start.  LinkedIn could be called the business version of FaceBook although many people use FaceBook as their business networking tool.  The general consensus is that for business LinkedIn is probably the most-used (25 million people) and best-known of the social networking websites.  Social networking uses the theory that we’re all connected to each other through those we know and that every other person on the Earth is connected by six other people, thus the term you’ve heard “six degrees of separation.”  You use these connections to network and meet people, ask and answer questions, and possibly, find jobs.

There’s a lot to completing your LinkedIn online profile, but you don’t have to do at all at one time.  I think my LinkedIn profile is about 75% complete and I’ve been working on it for a couple of months.  Take your time, do it right, then start to look into joining some LinkedIn groups to see what people are talking about.  The trick is not to get hundreds of people in your network (unless you’re a recruiter), but to build authentic relationships with people you think well of.

If you’re not sure what social networking can do for you, check out these articles:

Jobseekers are Beginning to Favor Social Networking Over Online Career Sites to Find Jobs

The Social Network as a Career Safety Net

LinkedIn: Old-School Network Isn’t Short of Fans