Applying Your Business Skills to Healthcare: A Complete Guide

Healthcare is often seen as an industry that’s hopelessly inefficient. That might be an unfair appraisal given just how complex the field is, and how the vital KPI for healthcare institutions is patient safety rather than profits. Yet it’s clear that the entire healthcare industry could learn from the world of business. That skills shift is best performed on an individual basis, with experienced businesspeople moving from the corporate space into the healthcare space and delivering their skills and insights there. If you’re interested in making that move, helping to drive real and meaningful change in the healthcare industry, this is the article for you.

Business and Healthcare

Before we look into how you might transition from a role in business to one in healthcare, let’s first look at why healthcare is ultimately a business, and why skills that you’ve picked up across your career in the corporate world will be directly transferable to the diverse and endlessly interesting field of healthcare.

The healthcare industry is sprawling. Taken together, it’s one of the largest sectors in the world. Every town and city across the world will have several healthcare institutions, and several of the world’s most valuable companies are situated in the healthcare space. Investment in healthcare shot up doing the pandemic and have remained high, and interest in the provision of better healthcare has also never been higher.

As well as becoming more important and influential in the global economy, healthcare is also an industry in need of fixes. It’s often running on old infrastructure that leaders have been reluctant to update for fear of rocking the boat. It’s also based on old working practices, with a large and poorly directed team of administrators who are too often fighting fires. These administrators are key to the proper, business-like functioning of the healthcare industry.

Transferrable Skills 

Let’s now look at the skills that you might be able to bring directly from your job in the corporate world into a job in the world of healthcare. There are dozens of these, and they will vary depending on the career path that you’ve taken to date. But here are those what are likely applicable to all workers, and the reasons behind their applicability to the healthcare industry.

• People skills. Whether getting the best out of your colleagues or leading a team to optimal work process and productivity, people skills can help you motivate a team of healthcare workers just as much as it is helping you work efficiently in your current role.
• Without planning skills, the wheels can quickly come off the bus in business and in healthcare. With a smart approach to planning projects, deliverables and outcomes, often honed in the world of business, healthcare leaders can ensure to-budget and to-deadline projects are completed perfectly.
• People in business are always looking for the best way to get tasks done accurately and efficiently. They’re ruthless in their pursuit of perfection, which is why their attitude could be so impactful in the world of healthcare, where flabby processes are in need of continued evolution and development.
• If you’ve worked with the budgeting team in your current role, you’ll know how important it is to keep a firm hand on the finances of any organization. In medicine, where money is often wasted, a firm budget can spell the difference between success and failure.

This is just scraping the surface of the kinds of transferrable skills that you can bring to bear in the healthcare industry. In fact, when you come to interview with a healthcare organization, you’ll realize just how valuable you might be for the team you’re applying for – and what outside knowledge you can bring to bear in the healthcare sector and for healthcare institutions.

Making the Move

Making any career move comes with its risks and its challenges. One of the biggest is cultural. Businesses are often cutthroat and competitive, cutting off the excess fat wherever possible and seeking growth as the key KPI of success. Healthcare institutions tend to work differently and are more interested in delivering value for money while keeping patients as safe as possible. With these different objectives comes a different culture, with the healthcare industry often erring on the side of caution to avoid upsets and mistakes when making changes.

As such, one of your first considerations if you’re considering a move into the healthcare industry is whether you’ll be able to adapt to the culture. Of course, you’ll be brought in to help change the culture, not adapt fully to it. But if you get a kick out of working hard to increase profits and earn yourself a bonus, the healthcare industry might not be for you. If you’re instead motivated to apply your skills to a meaningful and rewarding new career, you’ll find that making the career move is a no-brainer. You’ll just need to plan your next steps thoughtfully.

Research

Perhaps your first step should be to look into the job roles that might be applicable to you, your interests and your ambitions. Research these positions online, searching by employer or by sector, in order to understand what is demanded of certain healthcare professionals at certain stages of the value chain. You’re ultimately looking to discover the main job roles in this field, and how you can work towards a career that will be fulfilling and challenging while also giving you the opportunity for progression and personal growth.

One key strategy when conducting this research is to search for people, not for organizations. You might know someone in your network who has moved from corporate work into the healthcare sector. They might be able to tell you about their experience of the transition via a call or over a coffee. Meanwhile, you could use LinkedIn to search for people who’ve made similar moves, dropping them a personal message to ask what their experience has been like. Knowing what you’re getting yourself in for is an important step in your overall career shift.

Qualifications

Next up, you’ll want to search for the specific job roles which you’ve found that inspire you. Check out their job criteria listings so that you’re aware of what you might have to train in before applying to these roles. Sometimes, the job listings will ask for experience in healthcare, which you may have to build up as an intern or a volunteer. Other times they’ll tell you that experience working with certain software is preferable, which is something that you can do from your laptop via free trials or tutorials. Most often, though, job listings ask for qualifications – and these are certificates that you’ll have to work towards in order to be eligible for the most exciting jobs in the industry.

Happily, you’ll have plenty of options as to how you gain these qualifications. For instance, you could look to university courses in order to gain an undergraduate degree that’ll help you to apply for higher-level positions in healthcare. There are free online courses too, as well as paid-for modules hosted online. If you’re looking for relevant and informative online courses, you’ll often find that the Executive Master of Health Administration is the best way to go, perfectly fusing teachings in healthcare as well as honing your business acumen.

Understanding Healthcare

Let’s say you’ve gained a qualification in a field that makes you eligible for a job in the healthcare industry. That’s fantastic, but your education shouldn’t end there. If you’re serious about making positive changes to the industry (and not just arriving with a perspective that might actually be harmful to the sector you’re working in), you should also work hard to understand the current challenges and issues afflicting the industry from top to bottom. These include:

• Staff shortages and the need to train more doctor and nurses that’ll serve an aging population
• A crisis in care support for the elderly, which is due to become more acute as the tax burden falls on the young
• Supply chain issues, exacerbated by trade issues, the war in Ukraine, and the pandemic’s after-effects
• Staff burnout and dissatisfaction after years of hard work countering the effects of the pandemic
• The costs of treatment, which are rising, and the lack of preventative medicine that could mitigate these costs
• Funding issues, with different institutions struggling to find different forms of funding to keep them afloat

These are all significant issues, and there is no magic wand solution to them. Often, you’ll find that the best solution is to bring in expertise form the world of business in order to methodically and carefully help mitigate the worst effects of the issues mentioned above. Knowing what really afflicts the industry will mean you’re aware of any negative repercussions that could take place after you make changes in the healthcare organization you join.

Making the Shift

With all the knowledge and training in place, you’ll be ready to apply for a job in healthcare. This is an exciting moment that’s often months and years in the making. But it’s also a moment that you need to seize in the right way in order to deliver benefits as quickly as possible, using your business knowhow and your newfound medical knowledge to make positive changes. When you join a healthcare organization, work hard to understand their pain points. Keep their budget and financial forecast in mind at all times, as they’re often limited in what they can do by the amount of cash they have available.

Build bridges across the organization in order to improve communication between different departments and look to build a network that’ll help you perform your job better and with the perspectives of others informing your approach. Overall, remember that you’re coming from the world of business. While your enthusiasm for change will be appreciated by those who know the sector is in need of a shakeup, it’s important to remain humble and to listen as much as you’re speaking. Often the solutions are already there in the minds of your workers – you just have to ask them what they think should be changed, and drive that change from your position as a manager.

Developing Your Career

Different individuals have different objectives when it comes to their new career in healthcare. Some are interested in rising to the top of the organization they join, working hard to prove to board members and stakeholders that they have what it takes to drive real change in a bloated industry. Others are more interested in seeing the change they’re instituting make a real difference for people on the ground and the patients that they serve. Determining your career ambitions is something you should do early on after your career shift in order to set realistic personal goals and to drive you to work better, harder and faster.

When you join a healthcare institution, you’ll find that senior workers are looking for leadership that knows how to work things more efficiently. Your outlook will be highly valuable to them, and they’ll often come to you for advice, or run ideas by you to see if you think they’re appropriate. Being a node of expertise in this way already makes you a valuable employee, and someone who can really make an impact on high-level decision making. Relish this role, as it’s exactly why you’ve made the move in the first place.

Making an Impact

You likely moved from the world of business to the one of healthcare because you wanted to make an impact on the world around you via the skills you picked up in the corporate world. That’s a great underpinning motivation, and one that’ll see you achieve great things after your shift into healthcare. Still, to make sure you’re making an impact it’s important to establish some KPIs and to work relentlessly towards them. That’s how you’ll ultimately prove your worth to your employer and prove to yourself that you are truly making a difference to lives across the world.

Bring your skills from business into the healthcare sector with this guide, which details all you’ll need to know about making this ambitious and rewarding shift.