I found this course at the UC Berkeley Extension site. That job I interviewed for wants a person who can forecast how and why healthcare consumers make decisions about where to seek medical treatment.

The Economics of Health: Current Issues and Dilemmas

Choices about health care are often considered unique and separate from other choices we make in life. From an economic perspective, all choices depend on the availability of scarce resources, on alternative uses of these resources, and on differing human wants. This course emphasizes current issues and dilemmas facing health policy makers, and explores how and in what manner effective health choices can be made by individuals, institutions, and society.

I just figured something out. That company I interviewed with this morning doesn't really want someone who can data model. They want someone who can build a logical decision making tool that weights all these different pieces of information. And the pieces of information won't necessarily be all the same either or easily quantifiable.

How do you weight something abstract like quality of care as opposed to the numbers of procedures performed per 1,000 members? Which one is more important in eyes of a healthcare consumer?

What they really want and need is a biostatistician, and I'm definitely not that. They told me they don't want a biostatistician, but that's what the job really sounds like. Or maybe they need to say they want someone with a masters in Public Health.

I also have my Film History mid term tonight on top of everything else. I have no idea what to study for, even though we did get a study guide. I have a feeling with eveyrthing I've been going through, I'm just not going to do all that well.

So my interview was 20 minutes, as they were pressed for time as I was. I'm not sure how I did, but I"m glad it's over.

I dont' think they know what they want. They kept asking me if I could do data modeling, but the job description never mentioned that. Oh well, I tried my best to answer their questions. I've done a little bit of data modeling, but they were asking for data modeling with different sources of data which is hard to do. You have to make a judgement call when you're comparing apples to oranges.

I did get to meet my potential future boss from LA. She reminded me of last female boss. She was small, cute, perky and had two kids. If I get to work with her, I think we should get along great. She told me she went to the Ash Wednesday service at the catholic church I recommended, so that was a good sign.

I hate interview questions that go, "there a ton of analysts out there, why should we hire you?" I mean, what are you supposed to say to a question like that. Whatever.