Explore Health Care Careers

Read about the health care industries that employ people. You will see common careers and wages, as well as the top Minnesota employers hiring for each industry.

• Ambulatory Health Care Services
  Ambulatory health care settings are where patients get care during short-term, daytime appointments (as opposed to staying overnight or living in the facility). Settings can include doctors’ or dentists’ offices, walk-in or urgent care clinics, dialysis clinics, surgical clinics, or mental health clinics or offices.
• Hospitals
  The majority of health care providers, especially nurses, work in hospitals. Hospitals provide in-patient and ambulatory services. In-patient services require at least one overnight stay. Health care providers in hospitals diagnose and treat patients. Hospitals can range in size. In small towns and rural areas, hospitals can employ just one or two doctors and a few nurses to provide all of the care. In urban settings, hospitals can be very large, or part of complex systems, employing hundreds of specialty doctors and nurses as well as several other types of providers.
• Nursing and Residential Care Facilities
  Nursing and residential care facilities provide long-term services for patients or clients who need to live where they are receiving care. Examples include people who are elderly or who have disabilities. Residents generally have their meals and other services provided to them. Examples of these residential care facilities include assisted living, memory care, substance abuse treatment organizations, or skilled nursing facilities.  
• Social Assistance
  A growing number of health care providers are working in social assistance organizations, as well as other non-traditional settings, like public libraries, schools, mobile clinics, jails and prisons, or going to places to work with homeless people. More and more, health care professionals recognize that in order to make sure all people can access care, services need to be available in community settings where people already work, play, and live.