How can I take this job and turn it into a career path? (credit, degree)

[the city]

I have a sociology degree and my plan was to go into social work or be a drug and alcohol counselor. Well, one thing after another and I got burned out by that career path.

I was in human resources before and I got burned out by that before too. The HR department used me badly, gave me barely any HR tasks and signed off in my college credits and that was it. I don't feel like HR people are nice and caring people.

Social work and counselling seems worse than being a therapist. You get used by your patients and paid very low. Plus I think you don't need to have an extra two years of college to council some one. It should be one year accelerated track which they do if you had an undergrad in Social Work.

I looked into probation because my college minor was in criminal justice, but I don't like law enforcement or policing people.

SO now I am in a medical office as a patient coordinator. I do insurance billing for MediCal and other insurances as well as office work like scheduling appointments, scanning documents, answering the phones, and data entry. I like what I do now but at the end of the day $15 an hour w/out insurance coverage is not what I want from my degree.

I don't know how I can take a patient coordinator to the next level. I like being in the medical administration realm so maybe working at a large clinic or hospital would be a great place to work, but what to do at one of those places?

What's a job at a hospital that requires a BA degree and medical insurance billing and receptionist duties that pays at least $20 an hour or $40,000 annual salary?

Thanks!

[charlygal]

Look up every hospital you can find and start looking at their job postings. Look at job titles and job duties and requirements. Ignore any mention of degree. Find the job titles and responsibilities that appeal to you. Start trying to get the experience and requirements listed in the postings. Get any needed certs.

[johnnytang24]

I know someone who worked the front desk at a hospital and used the business/inside knowledge gained from that to go in to medical sales. In reality, you can go many different directions with the knowledge/lingo/process knowledge you gain from any job.

Learn as much as you can about medical billing, insurance, or whatever. When the opportunity for something else comes along, take it. Learn more. Take the next opportunity. It may take you in an unexpected direction, but even if you're not super ambitious, it's pretty easy to reach the mid level, which pays way more than $40k.

[johnnytang24]

Now that I think about it, I used to work in medical billing as a software developer. Doesn't California still have a cascading fee schedule? The rules are pretty convoluted, and I used to just make them up as I went along. No one ever questioned the accuracy (probably because they couldn't understand them either).

If you learn the rules real well, you can also be a Business Analyst for billing software companies/govt .

[annabanana123]

I know several people who have taken that knowledge and used it to go to the software or analyst side of things. The pay is a lot better and they still get to use that knowledge. FWIW my degree was in sociology and religion and I work in IT.