If you’re contemplating online healthcare classes to become a Medical Administrative Assistant, you will enter a healthcare industry that is booming with new jobs. The healthcare field cannot be beat, as it will generate more new jobs between 2008 and 2018 than any other industry.

Before you sign up for online healthcare classes, you will want to distinguish between two jobs in healthcare which sometimes get mixed up. Medical Administrative Assistants are different than Clinical Medical Assistants, even though you can pursue both of those careers through online healthcare training.

Here are the key topics you will learn about in a Medical Administrative Assistant Program:

• History and background of the medical assisting profession
• Interpersonal skills, medical ethics, and basic medical law
• Telephone techniques and skills for scheduling appointments
• Medical terminology
• Basics of insurance billing and coding
• Medical records management and management of practice finances

These are the types of subjects you’re taught in a Clinical Medical Assistant Program:

• Clinical responsibilities – assisting the physician with patient related care
• Preparing patients for examination, routine procedures and diagnostic testing
• HIPAA, patient confidentiality, legal aspects of healthcare
• Recording vital signs, blood pressure, and other patient care items
• Review of medications, allergies and other pharmacology related items
• Laboratory procedures, phlebotomy and proper techniques to collect specimens
• Cardiology and the proper placement of leads when taking a 12 lead EKG

Can you see the difference? While the two healthcare careers are similar in name, they are geared toward different areas within a medical facility. A Medical Administrative Assistant deals with patients and staff in a clerical or administrative sense, while a Clinical Medical Assistant’s tasks are generally more clinical in nature.

Hopefully that cleared up some of the confusion that comes along with these two professions; be sure to request more information about the online healthcare classes you are interested in taking. You will not regret setting and achieving career goals for a chance to work in the healthcare industry!