It’s easy to discount, or lose sight of, the experience of a technology worker who isn’t working in a product company, publically traded company, or startup.
Particularly, like me, if that company was a hospital or other healthcare organization.
You might be surprised at the scope of work healthcare organizations do, and their size, in terms of facilities, staff, and, of course, financials.
In 2023 the University of Chicago Medicine reported $3.7B in operating revenues (their publiclicaly available, audited statement, is here https://edge.sitecorecloud.io/unichicagomc-81nbqnb3/media/pdfs/adult-pdfs/about-us/financial-information/2023-audited.pdf), held nearly $5B in assets, employed over 10,000, and had near 1.5 million patients come through its campuses.
The campuses not only provide healthcare, procedural, well care, diagnostics, and other health services, but also houses food service, holistic/religious services, financial services, counseling, along with security (UCM’s Hyde Park campus has its own police force), transport (UCM’s Hyde Park campus has its own bus service), laundry, and other environmental services.
How big is UCM, financially, in relation to the City of Chicago?
In their ACFR (audited certified financial reports), the City of Chicago had $9B in revenue (a little less than 3x UCM), and $20B in assets (around 4x UCM). At this glance we could say UCM is 1/4 the size of the City of Chicago. And it’s a non-profit hospital IN the City of Chicago.
How big is UCM, financially, in relation to some well known public companies? (There’s more to financials, like liabilities, but we’re comparing only revenue here…)
Right on the heels of
| Hanes Brands | $5.4B |
| Lions Gate Entertainment | $4.02B |
| Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. | $4.3B |
Better than
| Sally Beauty Holdings | $3.69B |
| Steelcase, Inc (Office Furniture) | $3.1B |
| Winnebago Industries (RVs and Boats) | $3.1B |
| Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc | $3.4B |
| Guess? Inc (Clothing) | $2.8B |
| WK Kellog, Inc (Food) | $2.75B |
| Peloton Interactive, Inc. | $2.7B |
| Papa John’s International, Inc. (Pizza) | $2.12B |
| La-Z-Boy Incorporated (Furniture) | $2.05B |
| SolarWinds Corporation | $766MM |
| Udemy, Inc | $749MM |
| Warby Parker Inc. | $697MM |
| NerdWallet, Inc. | $591MM |
If you’re a tech worker in hospitals and healthcare, hold your head up. The work you do is hard. Not only are you supporting a large organization’s operations, but doing so potentially at the scale of a city, in a highly regulated industry.
For those out looking to hire, think about the experience gained by healthcare tech workers in terms of what they have to support
- Large user bases both employed, as well as “customers” (patients)
- Large scopes of support (business and clinical systems, including things like environmental services, HR, Finance)
- Heavily regulated industries (supporting both clinical and financial regulations, such as HIPAA, GDPR, SOX, PCI)
- And the “monster under the bed”, often with a mix of both old/outdated and new technologies