How to Become a Healthcare Administrator?

How to Become a Healthcare Administrator?

Overview

A Healthcare administrator manages or directs the operations of an organization like clinics, hospitals etc. We can also call them healthcare manager or executive. Their job includes handling the organization's services, program, staff, budget, coordination between departments and other services. 

They don't deal with patients directly on a day to day basis, but they manage the organization's facilities so that all the operations work efficiently and patients get the adequate medical care.

Healthcare Administrator's role and responsibilities:

  • Manage daily operations of a hospital and supervise the staff
  • Making a proper coordination between different departments of the organization
  • Proper planning, coordination and implementation of different services of the organization
  • Set budget goals and costs for service, and direct fundraising and fees for special cases
  • Keeping an eye on the records of supply in all departments
  • Pay attention to staff related issues like scheduling, salary and hiring
  • Pay attention to patient fees, billing and other issues within the organization


Skills required for a Healthcare Administrator:

1. Communication:  In their day to day job, a healthcare administrator needs to effectively communicate with a wide range of people and to make coordinate between different parties. This includes the ability to listen, write and effectively present information. So strong communication skill is very essential for their day to day job.
2. Leadership: In large organizations, an administrator won't work alone as one can't handle and manage so much work. So he/she has a team, thus he/she should have leadership skills also to manage and lead the team effectively. 
3. Management: Management skills are a must because the core job of an administrator is to manage the organization's workflow and managing the coordination between different parties.
4. Planning: An administrator should have good planning skills as his/her job includes planning and implementing those plans for an effective and smooth work in the organization.
5. Problem solving: In such organizations, there is lots of issues related staff, patients or management occurred everyday and an administrator should be able to solve these problems effectively and As soon as possible.
6. Healthcare environment knowledge: These include the knowledge of staff roles and responsibilities, rights and law related to patients, the organizations of policy etc.
7. Technical knowledge: In these organizations there are different kinds of equipment used and an administrator needs to order or get repair those equipment or their parts so to do all these he/she first needs to have the knowledge of all those equipment.
8. Quick decision making skill
9. Services oriented mind

Eligibility

A bachelor degree in Health administration is must to pursue this career, but a master degree is a more common educational path for those who wish to reach upper management.

How to be there?

  • First of all, the aspirants should earn a bachelor degree in Hospital administration from a reputed institute.
  • One can get job based on bachelor degree, but if one want to at management level position then the master degree is must.
  • Many institutes also offer short term certification and diploma courses in hospital administration.

Work Hours

It is a career which required long hours to work. It's common to work 10 to 12 hours most of the days. In emergence, cases your presence always required.

Salary

As per payscale.com, a Hospital Administrator earns an average salary of Rs 414,536 per year. A skill in Operations Management is associated with high pay for this job. Experience has a moderate effect on income for this job.
A beginner can get a salary of Rs. 20,000 to 25,000 per month. With having an experience of around 3-5 years one can get Rs. 30,000 to 35000. The salary will get the increase with the experience level.

Career Scope

As the healthcare industry is growing so the demand of professionals in different healthcare sectors, and healthcare administrator is one of them. Larger organizations can have multiple administrators. The aspirants can get a job in hospitals, clinics and rehabilitation centers.

Pros and Cons

Pros
  • Meet wide range and different kind of people
  • Satisfaction to work and running an organization which helps people in living a healthy life
  • It is a recession proof career
Cons
  • Will have a very busy schedule always and long work hours
  • High work pressure

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