Medical assistants put in health care’s necessary work

Sure, you’re there to visit the doctor but before you grab that gown, you’ll need to check in with some of health care’s most valuable workers: the assistants: While the title may imply secondary status, the roles are anything but. In fact, for some health care facilities, the role of the medical assistant is absolutely essential. Depending on their training, today’s medical assistant can play numerous roles, including those on the administrative end, like updating medical records, handling insurance issues, answering phone calls, setting on telehealth sessions, responding to emails and maintaining appointment schedules, to small medical tasks, such as checking patients’ vital signs, drawing blood, running vision tests, preparing lab work and more.

Job requirements vary, ranging from on-the-job training to various professional certifications. “A lot of what we do is based on the person you’re working for or the group you’re working with,” says Shannon Gillman, a clinical medical assistant who worked for Provena Health and Advocate Health Care in the suburbs of Chicago before moving to Colorado last fall. Various responsibilities

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, most medical assistants work in physicians’ offices, hospitals, outpatient clinics or other health care facilities. A sampling of medical assistant jobs include:

Administrative medical assistants often fill out insurance forms or code patients’ medical information. They often answer telephones and schedule patient appointments.

Clinical medical assistants have different duties, depending on the state where they work. They may do basic laboratory tests, dispose of contaminated supplies, and sterilize medical instruments. They may have additional responsibilities, such as instructing patients about medication or special diets, preparing patients for X-rays, removing stitches, drawing blood, or changing dressings.

Ophthalmic medical assistants and optometric assistants help ophthalmologists and optometrists, respectively, provide eye care. They show patients how to insert, remove and care for contact lenses. Ophthalmic medical assistants also may help an ophthalmologist in surgery.

Podiatric medical assistants work closely with podiatrists. They make castings of feet, expose and develop X-rays and help podiatrists in surgery.

The details

Medical assistants held approximately 687,000 jobs in 2018. The BLS predicts that the employment of medical assistants will grow 23 percent through 2028, which is much faster than the growth average for all occupations. The growth can be attributed to the aging baby-boom population’s need for preventive medical services, which are often provided by physicians, who will hire more assistants to perform administrative and clinical duties.

While most states have informal educational requirements for medical assistants, most employers are looking for individuals who have completed a certification process or a one- or two-year program at a community college, vocational school, technical school or university.

The median annual wage for medical assistants was $34,800 in May 2019.