General "current trends in healthcare" interview question...

[jparsenal87]

Just had my first interview a few days ago, and was surprised that I found myself floundering on such a general question. While one of my interviewers was extremely conversational, this particular interview was very much "Question-answer" format. I had previously asked for clarification on a question, and only received a "I think it speaks for itself", so I was hesitant to ask for clarification again.

The question was stated as "What do you know about current healthcare trends?".

I think the thing that made my mind go wild was that I wasn't sure what exactly in "health care" I was being asked about. Insurance and coverage policy? Regulation and administration of health care institutions? Information on trends in patient populations and illnesses? Changing role of physicians? All these came flooding into my mind at once.

Sadly, I feel as though I kind of started compiling a laundry list of issues in the health care industry, failing to do a very deep dive into just a few. As someone interested in rural medicine, I thought I might, if given the opportunity again, focus solely on things like the financial struggles of rural hospitals and the transition from a fee-per-service model to a value-based healthcare model.

Would love to hear how some others would tackle such an open question. I think in other circumstances, I might ask for some guidance on what areas of healthcare were meant....

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[djsbaseball2014]

n=1 med student, but I do interview for my school and like to ask a question similar to this.

For these types of questions (tell me about an ethical issue in healthcare is another common one), I'm looking for:
1) That you have enough meaningful experience in healthcare to be able to talk about at least one issue that's important to you/that you have experience with
2) That you can clearly articulate an argument, and depending on the question, that you're able to clearly articulate the other side of the argument as well
Note that your knowledge of all things healthcare related is not on the list. I am intentionally broad to allow the applicant the latitude to talk about something that is within their area of interest/experience. I don't expect applicants to know everything about the field, so I don't think asking something more specific would be fair, e.g. if an applicant's experience is focused on geriatrics/nursing homes, I wouldn't want to ask them about trends/hot topics with regards to reproductive health/birth control.

At least in my personal opinion, the best approach would be to pick a particular topic you're knowledgeable about and go into a bit more depth about it.

Just for clarification, would talking about health disparities in underserved communities, social determinants of health, teledoctoring etc be considered answering the OP's question? I have a few interviews coming up and want to make sure talking about health disparities would be on topic

 

[676188]

The first things that came to my mind:

Trumpcare or ACA, changes, etc
The opioid epidemic
Physician shortage in rural/underserved areas
Healthcare spending
The transgender community and their needs as it relates to healthcare
HIV/PrEP...b/c there was a NEJM article about it recently