Curriculum documents and course lists can he helpful for prospective students hoping to find a program that matches their interests. If they know they’re interested in working in a health care setting in a role that doesn’t involve providing medical care (as was the case with the prospective student below), seeing a list of courses can help them see the variations and similarities in available program choices and help inform their decision.

Hi Kristina,

Thanks for your email. There are some similarities between Medical Office Administration and Health Information Management programs in that both include courses in medical terminology and both careers include handling of confidential information.

MOA is generally public facing (think reception in a medical setting) and you’d be pulling patient documents, filing confidential information, perhaps booking appointments, etc.

HIM is more records-focused and includes less interfacing with the public. Think an IT program for a health care setting. You’d be building and populating systems that house confidential patient information. These are the same documents that a MOA would then pull in the doctor’s office for a patient.

Across Canada there is currently a push to digitize all health care files. An MOA may input patient information into a database, or pull a patient’s record. Working in HIM, you’d be sure that all the different software/systems speak to each other, are secure, pull data correctly etc.

You’ll find a list of courses for each program at the links below under the Courses sections:

MOA: https://www.nscc.ca/learning_programs/programs/plandescr.aspx?prg=MOAS&pln=MEDOFFAS

HIM: https://www.nscc.ca/learning_programs/programs/plandescr.aspx?prg=HIMP&pln=HEINFOMAN

Please feel free to send any questions my way. I’d be happy to help!

Meghan

I use curriculum documents when creating program-specific presentations as well. I found IT Programming courses in the new curriculum repository and included a course list on this presentation slide. I’ll be hosting a webinar with program faculty and they’ll use this slide to highlight some exciting aspects of the program.