Simran Dhanoa reflects on how her HIHIM degree has served as a launchpad for her career in health metrics. As a proud “career butterfly,” she’s taken advantage of numerous professional opportunities in healthcare.
Simran Dhanoa, HIHIM ’21, has held an array of jobs in healthcare informatics, from care coordinator to data analyst. After stints at Swedish Health Services, Providence Health & Services, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and even Amazon, she landed at UW Medicine, where she now works as a Senior PMO Business Analyst.
“I think you should try everything, because you will figure out what you like to do faster than someone who’s been in the same spot for years,” she said.
Growing up, Dhanoa had two contrasting role models: her mom was a nurse, while her dad worked in finance. She hoped to find a job that was simultaneously public-serving, like her mom’s, and analytical, like her dad’s. When she discovered the HIHIM program at UW, it struck her as the best of both worlds.
Describing her thought process at the time, she said, “I want to be there for the patients, but I also really want to use my skill set of business and understanding of operations. So how do I do both?”
The program connected her with ongoing mentors and exposed her to a variety of career paths via guest speakers, capstone projects, and a comprehensive curriculum.
Don’t Be Afraid to Try Something New
“An HIHIM degree really sets you up to be just about anywhere you want to be within healthcare. It’s the beginning step, right? The program shows you everything that there is in healthcare, and you can take that wherever you want to take it. And I took it everywhere.”
Each new job bolstered her toolkit of skills. She picked up the nitty-gritty of finance from overseeing operations at a bank and emotional skills from supervising hospice care as a certified nursing assistant. She even found her dream job as a program manager at Swedish. Nonetheless, Dhanoa itched to try something new. She ultimately stepped down from her job at Swedish to take an uncertain, year-long contract position at Amazon. She needed to figure out, once and for all, if her passions lay in business or healthcare.
“Don’t be afraid to try something new,” she reflected. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t take a risk.”
Figuring out what you don’t want to do, she believes, is just as important as figuring out what you do want to do. As it turned out, the role at Amazon reminded her why she was drawn to healthcare in the first place.
“I have to have a why, and my why is definitely that I love helping people, and I really like to enjoy what I do. I’m not the person who just does the nine-to-five for the money. I want to make sure that whatever I’m doing is impacting someone in a good way–somewhere, someplace, somehow.”
-Simran Dhanoa, HIHIM ’21
Using Health Metrics to Improve and Grow Organizations
“Health informatics and health information management (HIHIM) professionals are trained to work with health information,” said HIHIM program director Dr. Karima Lalani. “They ensure the quality, integrity, and availability of health information, and these roles involve collecting and analyzing data to assess quality of care, clinical performance, and safety measures.”
Dhanoa found her niche in a sub-field of healthcare informatics: metrics. At UW Medicine, she analyzes key performance indicators, or KPIs. Examples of KPIs range from length of appointments to “pajama time,” or the number of hours that physicians spend working when they’re technically off-the-clock. In contrast to corporate organizations, the most important KPIs for UW Medicine are around patient and provider outcomes, not revenue, she said. In this role, Dhanoa interfaces with different teams from across the organization. Every day is different, which is just the way she likes it.
“KPIs and service-level agreements (SLAs) are about quantifying where we are as a healthcare organization, and where we can grow and keep doing better so that providers are not stressed out, and our patients are well taken care of,” she explained. “Healthcare is a very consensus-driven industry. Everyone has an input, and we all work together and make sure everyone’s in agreement before we do something. And that’s very, very different from the corporate world.”
Using her UW HIHIM degree as a launch pad, Dhanoa found a career that combines her two passions, and that suits her ambitious, adaptable personality.
“I’m in healthcare, but I’m also doing that business side of it that I really wanted to do. So I found my happy place,” she said.