Medical Assistant

Medical Assistant — earning a living series

You may want to review the earlier post at http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/emt-v-cna/

We have already discussed CNA v EMT for entry level healthcare providers. There is another ‘entry level’ provider that is relatively new on the scene – new as in the last 20 years. That 3rd person is known as a ‘Medical Assistant”. A medical assistant typically has about a years worth of training in such things as office management, coding and billing, some lab and x-ray experience, phlebotomy and injections and medical records creation and maintenance. One school that I know of which trains Medical Assistants charges $30,000.00 USD per student for the year. That does not include living expenses.

Typical jobs are in doctor’s offices which would include doc in a box situations and in hospitals as a unit secretary, medical records tech, billing office and maybe the lab. There are jobs as a free standing coder / biller or as a medical transcription person.

Overall the training is good and well rounded for the intended purpose. MA is also a good job as far as it goes and it does help in your understanding of things so that you can progress up the food chain ladder if you want to.

The down side of MA school / jobs is that it takes a long time to be able to earn money going this route, a whole year [or more depending on if you go to school full time or part time] v CNA where you can start earning in as little as 3 weeks. Once again $30,000.00 is a rather high price to pay for the school.

Several friends have gone though the school and then found out that the area was over saturated with MAs and that they could not find a job in the field – one is working at a local big box store.

MA’s do not end up with a professional license in most states – they work under the MD’s license. With that situation there is no ‘governing board’ or union to ‘protect’ the public as far as their practice goes.

IF you want to go into this area that is great! I would not want to start off with it as my first exposure. I would recommend starting with CNA and then going into this, EMS or maybe nursing.

 

Cross ref    http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/emt-v-cna/

 

One thought on “Medical Assistant

  1. Pingback: EMT v CNA | RBO'S MUSINGS at Prepare Survive Thrive

Leave a Reply