Do you think those in managed care lose some of their clinical knowledge?
Or is it a different type of clinical? I'm afraid if I go into managed care, I'd lose a lot of what I learn in the hospital about antibiotics, infusion rates, compatabilities.
What types of personalities are better for MC and which for hospital? What kind of career growth is there with both? In the future, which is more valuable?
Also, how do you like managed care?
I think you do lose some of the day to day.. antibiotics. . Acute care in general, most all of adme and drug interactions... that said , I think managed care is clinical in different ways. . Especially regarding guidelines, drugs' appropriate roles in therapy, and risk/benefit analysis.
To sum it up super broadly, I think hospital is better for detail oriented people, and managed care better for global thinking styles. Managed care is mostly about big picture macro trends.. you do get to do a LOT of drug info research and work with all the rare drugs and their roles in therapy. You also get to dig into the patient level therapeutics when doing PA's or mtm if your company does that.
I think managed care requires better people skills, since you are representing a big payor and will be dealing face to face with tons of different business and healthcare personnel, and have to fit in to the corporate culture. Hospital obviously requires people skills too , but ive known a lot of hospital specialists who were way nerdier and anti-social than I am, which is saying something.
Future of both is about equal. The big, successful players (on the hospital side, think mayo, anderson, big HMO owned healthcare systems.. on the mco side, we are talking about kaiser and kaiser clones) are CLEARLY here to stay based on their recent financial disclosures and heavy buying sprees. I would bet that KP for example will come out relatively unscathed after PPACA falllout and some mcos could even survive a "single payer" system.
Small, weaker players, both in mcos and hospitals, are either holding on for dear life, dropping like flies, or are facing a highly uncertain future.
In either industry, the stability of the job and career is highly dependent on the stability of the organization. A lot of hospitals and payors are being bought up and chopped. Others are stuck in the dark ages and have no idea.
If I was looking for a hospital job .. id either be looking at critical access hospitals or large hospital systems only. For mco's, only those nonprofits with a good balance sheet and company history.
I love managed care. It strikes a very nice balance between research, teaching, and business analysis. The downside, like you mentioned, is you do lose a lot of clinical knowledge, and also you lose out on having a lot of colleagues. I think managed care also shuts the door on clinical specialties, whereas hospital opens them. That is OK for me at least .. I see my path as being more business oriented in the long run.
Hth.
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I notice managed care pharmacists studying a lot harder for bcps than hospital pharmacists, if that tells you anything... but that could just be observation bias.
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There are also a lot of roles in managed care orgs. That said, most are generalists in a very small department, exceptions being at places like ESI , Aetna, CVS, etc. I am not talking about working for a PBM. I dont really have any experience with that except I can tell you places like Caremark and ESI have specialty roles and focused roles within their large pool of pharmacists. If you want to work for a payor, youll be a generalist.
Of course, you also have amb care specialists working for big integrated orgs like KP .. I would not consider them managed care pharmacists, although they do work for a managed care org.
If you want clinical + managed care, id recommend amb care or a similar role. My old preceptor worked for KP and made 160k+ bonus , but they were doing 30 hours of patient care per week in addition to 20-30 hours of research.
