Anita Mills has worked in the healthcare field since 1975. Anita was attracted to healthcare while working as a Dietary Aide in high school. She really enjoyed talking and interacting with the patients and felt good about helping them. She became an Health Unit Coordinator after she graduated.
Anita teaches the online Health Unit Coordinator course for We Care Online. This involves incorporating all that she has learned throughout her years as an HUC and HUC instructor, and sharing all her experience and knowledge of the Health Unit Coordinator role. This includes providing current content to prepare the student to take the NAHUC Certification exam. Anita started working for WCO in 2018.
Anita lives in Minnesota and has two daughters. She loves sports, playing golf in the summer and bowling in the winter. She also loves to travel and has traveled to Canada, Mexico and Europe.
Anita has worked as a Health Unit Coordinator for many years. She also has been Instructor and Advisor at a college in Minnesota for the last 15 years, teaching Health Unit Coordinating and Medical Terminology. She has several certificates and a BA in Organizational Management and Communication. Anita was on the NAHUC Education Board for 4 years and is currently the Director of Certification for the NAHUC.
Anita always tells her students this: Student’s need to be caring and empathetic because of the environment they will be working in. The other thing they should know is when they work in healthcare, most often in a hospital facility, they will be working different shifts, week-ends and holidays. In other words, this is not a Monday through Friday 9-5 job.
Over the years Anita has seen a lot change in healthcare. Healthcare is constantly changing and there have been many changes in the HUC role over the years. The latest is the implementation of the electronic medical record (EMR) and computerized physician order entry (CPOE) in the hospital setting. This has had a drastic effect on the HUC role with the HUC no longer transcribing physician orders. The HUC still performs this task in most healthcare center/LTC facilities, so it is important for HUC’s to still have knowledge in medical abbreviations and terminology. Hospitals and many healthcare centers have implemented EMR requiring the HUC to have advanced computer skills.
Since WeCareOnline is an online company, Anita knows that people don’t get to see her face to face or to see her work space. Anita states she has a large poster of the world map at her desk. She looks at it periodically, dreaming about some of the places she would like to visit someday.
