Why Do You Do Healthcare IT?

What are the reasons that you selected your current career path?  What drives you to keep pushing through the muck of your job every hour of every day?

Hopefully, this personal story from me will prompt you to spend time contemplating these questions and  then analyze whether you need to make adjustments to your career path in order to accelerate your ability to get to do what you really want to do more often.

I started my interested in computers my senior year in high school when I took a computer class on a whim and discovered that I really enjoyed the challenges of solving problems that would make something easier or better for people.  I also was really excited to find that I was actually very creative (I sucked at Art in school and was previously convinced that I had no creativity).  Well, it turned out that programming computers gave me the opportunity to express my creativity in a whole new way that had nothing to do with colors and shapes, but had more to do with real problems experienced by real people.

As my career has progressed, it has been a long time since I have “pounded out code” but I have been very careful to make sure that I have increasing influence on the ability of “my customers” to be able to do their job more effectively.   In fact, as health IT experts in the last 4-5 years, there are opportunities everywhere we look to help our customers (Doctors, nurses, other health care professionals, administrators, etc) do their jobs more effectively.

I was at dinner at RSNA with radiologists and executives from a current client and we were discussing the return on investment from their investment in the technology that we had deployed with them.  After letting the rest of his team answer in their own ways, the most senior radiologist spoke up, he said “It’s simple. This project has made me a better doctor.”

I am still smiling ear to ear.  I could not have said it better.  That is why I do what I do…how about you?

About the author

Joe Lavelle

Joe Lavelle is the Co-Founder of intrepidNow. Prior to that Joe was an accomplished healthcare IT executive and career coach with a record of successfully meeting the business and technology challenges of diverse organizations including health plans, health delivery networks, health care companies, and several Fortune 500 companies.

Joe is also the author of Act As If It Were Impossible To Fail, available on Amazon.

1 Comment

Click here to post a comment
   

Categories