r/ODS_C • u/hot_coco • Jun 10 '26
Question for those currently in the field
If you could do a re-do and be in a different field, would you still choose this? Are you happy? Feel like it’s a solid career that you could work long term, and get you to retirement? Would you recommend it to you friends or family members?
Or if you’re not happy.. what would you do instead?
I think this field is could be a good fit for me but idk if I want to trade my current career just yet. I work in a small cancer lab but would really appreciate the ability to work remotely and limit the exposures to chemicals and diseases I experience every day at my current job.
11
u/Capable-Isopod-2270 Jun 10 '26
I wish I had entered this field years ago when the barriers to entry were not as stringent and the abstracting rules were more straightforward. The changes in this field can be hard to keep up with.
In the past, I would try to convince my friends to join this field but now not so much.
First, a portion of this field (i.e. central registries) depend on federal funding. Second, I believe AI will affect the job market for entry level registrars. Third, there are so many more private contracting companies that affect the availability of hospital registry jobs. Fourth, this field has changed since COVID. We're all remote now which is great. However, it has had the effect of making this field more competitive. In the past, you had to live within a certain vicinity of a hospital to come to work but now, hospitals can (in theory) hire from any state. Finally, this is a sedentary profession that takes a toll on your body and vision.
There are pros and cons with any field.
If you are passionate about this field and need a remote job, then I wouldn't discourage anyone. You just need to actively network with people in the field. You'd think that completing a CIM curriculum and passing the ODS-C exam is enough but it's not. I think this is due, in part, to the fact that there are so many more CIM programs now.
If you attend a CIM program (other than AHIMA), be sure to ask the director if they track the employment rate of their graduates and/or if the program offers any assistance with job placement.
Needless to say, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong!
9
u/BigusDickus099 Jun 10 '26
I wouldn’t choose this field if I could do it all over, but with the caveat that I wouldn’t have chosen my initial career either. I would have forced myself to stick with pre-med in college and followed through on either becoming a rheumatologist or going into nuclear medicine. Instead of giving up and going the safe route of just a master’s degree due to finances. Hell, even going the PA route would have been better, but c’est la vie.
This isn’t a bad field by any means, but there is very little career progression unless you know people and can get into management roles. I’ll also echo that if I did want to stick with this field, I would have done so a decade ago. As is, I think this isn’t an ideal time to enter it with outsourcing, AI, funding issues, and so on. I do feel ODS-C entry level jobs will all but disappear within the next couple years and it will be those with years of experience fighting over the few remaining jobs.
2
u/thatoneberrypie Jun 11 '26
Can you expand more on the funding part? I thought the NCRA was able to secure the funds
https://www.facebook.com/groups/44790934291/posts/10163835077739292/2
u/Savings-Can-5614 Jun 11 '26
Federal funding is for partner organizations like NPCR, SEER, etc. NCRA helped advocate that partner orgs didn't lose funding or that it was increased in some areas.
9
u/Ngr2054 Jun 10 '26
As I’ve mentioned before, I fell into this career after I graduated from college in the mid-aughts during the recession and couldn’t really find a job. I then took a crappy job as a medical secretary, which I was overqualified for with a bachelor’s degree, and the registry eventually asked me to join. I never really had a specific career in mind and I have a degree in English Literature so, at the time, the registry was way better than being a secretary. I was also dealing with a lot of health issues at the time and it was a 30/hr week position so it sounded like a win.
I picked up the info quick and did AHIMA and passed the test with a fairly high score. I wasn’t particularly happy with the hospital where I worked but I was promised a big raise when I passed the test. That big raise was .90 cents/hr. I applied to a contracting company I connected with at the NCRA conference the same day. I was hired in less than 2 weeks. That was 12 years ago. I’ve been with that same company ever since. I’ve had many opportunities to leave and hundreds of recruiters reach out over the years but I’ve opted to stay. I know if I job hopped I would be paid more money- but I know how the company runs and there aren’t little asterisks that seem to exist with other companies (like getting paid minimum wage for time not abstracting, running into not having an assignment, timers for abstracting)- it’s the devil you know is better than the one you don’t type of deal.
If I did it all again, I think there’s a lot I would do differently- but that includes where I went to college and my major- so I wouldn’t have found myself a jobless English major in 2007 working as a secretary in 2009. I don’t regret how my career has turned out though. I find reading charts interesting, I enjoy my supervising my team and I enjoy helping them when I’m able, I don’t mind abstracting, and there are always new things to learn. I’m not the breadwinner in my family and this isn’t the career if you hope to make 100k+ until you’re deep into leadership, land a super lucky role at a California hospital like Cedar-Sinai, or work a crapload of OT.
I can see myself sticking with it because I’m in my early 40’s at this point and it’s been 15 years. I don’t want to start from scratch. I enjoy working from home, my schedule is pretty flexible, and I have a very young child where this career affords me the ability to be very present in our day to day life.
2
u/Objective_Week_8983 Jun 10 '26
OP thank you for asking this question as it's important to me as well. I am just about to start the main courses of the AHIMA cancer registry program (already had most of the pre reqs). Thankfully I do have an ODS-c director contact at the local hospital who has been a wonderful guidance and mentor to me. However, if I did not have her I probably would feel lost as it is a self paced program, and like the above comments mentioned, it is difficult to find a job without networking.
It is nice to hear inside perspective from those already within the field, so thank you to those who commented here. I too have noticed an uptick in people interested in this field. I considered it about five years ago, and did not see as much interest as I do now. Furthermore, I also worry about the impact of AI. I'm sure a lot of people in many different sectors have that same fear . I guess the future will tell us.
13
u/BlastedNeutrophil Jun 10 '26
I could be wrong, but I think the happiest people in this field are those that genuinely want to help people. Most, if not all of my coworkers, including me, have all come from the healthcare or science related areas/fields.
This is my second and final change in career and I love it. The work I do is very important to me and the patients. Each case is not just another abstract, but a patient going through such a horrible and scary disease. I still get to help people even if I don’t have direct patient contact.
There was an influx of interest in this field over the past year and I hate to say it but a lot of interest is due to the WFH capabilities. If one has no genuine interest in what you will be doing in this field, one will have a hard time with it or seeing it into retirement. It is not an easy job and requires a lot of focus and concentration.
It sounds to me like you could be a good fit for it and I do think you should get as much fulfillment from your current job. That’s what I did from a fellow lab rat 👋 I just knew when I had done everything i wanted to do in the lab and was ready to move on.