Gaining Experience in the Health Care Field

Since I started College in 2004, I focused on taking as many science classes as possible. I wanted to stay in medical field, I never thought of myself being in the business field. I used to think medical field would open the door to many secured jobs in pharmacy and dentistry. In 2007, my mom had a severe stroke. After taking two years off from school to take care of my mom, my goal changed. Going back to school, I wanted a degree which I could find a job right when I get out of school and while waiting to get into pharmacy school. My choices of pharmacy schools were narrow down to in state schools only. I was lucky to be introduced to Health Care Management by a friend. Health Care Management sounded attractive to me because I always wanted to work in the health care field. I was not sure I was born to be a manager. I had experience with project management working for a private law firm for two years but not people management. A few years ago, I took the class “how to deal with difficult people” at Community College of Aurora because I doubted my communication skill. I never thought I would be a good communicator. In middle school, writing in Vietnamese was one of my strengths, I even wanted to be a journalist when I grow up but when writing in English, it is one of my weaknesses. The first semester starting Health Care Management courses; I took four health care management classes at a time. That was my best semester because I got to take a break from taking science classes. There were challenges because I wasn’t confident in writing and presenting in front of the class. But I learned a lot out of those classes. My favorite topic in most of my papers was pharmaceutical industry but I also learned about long term care and hospic...

... middle of paper ...

...ved. Helping with writing policy projects, I learned the guideline for accurate diagnosing and billing based on ICD-9, soon will be ICD-10, and CPT codes, respectively. I feel more confident being a future office manager by knowing this guideline.

Even though almost 300 employees got laid off the last couple months due to new regulation change of Affordable Care Act, Ms. Seidelberg wants to have me back for 2014 HEDIS season. I didn’t expect to get a job out of this internship but this is a good opportunity for me to build more working experience in health care field. Approaching to graduation, I am ready to use the knowledge from school and the skills that I learned during my internship to continue working and building more experience. I am motivated to come back to Denver Health! This time I will be proactive at finding ways to work smarter and more effectively.