This summer I was presented with the opportunity to work as an intern with Wabash alum Dr. Lincoln Smith at his start-up company, Analytic Managed Services. LLC. The premise of the newly found company was to utilize data which was made publicly available by the Transparency in Coverage Final Rule. This ruling forced insurance companies to publish reimbursement rate data for every physician and every current procedural terminology code. While many services already available collect and refine this data, they are mostly marketed towards insurance companies. Dr. Smith wants to use this data to help primary care physicians run more cost-efficient practices. Coding was an essential skill for this internship. While I had no previous experience or knowledge of coding, with help from Dr. Smith I was able to quickly understand the tools needed to succeed in this internship. Throughout the summer, another developer focused on scrapping rate data, specifically rate data from physicians in Pennsylvania, from insurance companies’ websites. This data was packaged in a type of machine-readable file called a Json. I was tasked with parsing the data in these Json files and then converting the data into an easily digestible,
one-page report for physicians. Although Dr. Smith was always available if I needed help with troubleshooting, I primarily worked independently and freely with little micromanaging over the course of the internship.
This experience aligned with my career goal to become a physician while also introducing me to coding through hands-on work. For this internship, I had to familiarize myself with payment systems in medicine such as fee-for-service, value-based reimbursement, and capitation. Furthermore, I had to understand the role of insurance companies in the changing landscape of healthcare payment systems. I found exposure to these concepts pertinent to me as an aspiring physician. This internship in general gave me more insight to the payer side of healthcare and to how modern technology is advancing medicine not only from a scientific standpoint, but from a financial one as well. While this internship may not be for everyone, I thoroughly enjoyed my experience. I would like to thank Dr. Smith for the opportunity and Jill Rogers for helping me find this internship.
