Healthcare Administration Careers

Medical and health services managers, health care administrators and health care executives all are responsible for planning, directing and coordinating the services in a health care facility. Health care administrators can work for health companies and hospital systems. They may oversee one department or several facilities.

What do Healthcare Administrators do?

This career requires skills relating to economics, finance, marketing, organization, planning, and policy evaluation and implementation. You can learn these skills by attaining a Bachelor’s in Health Science or a Masters in Health Sciences. Healthcare administrators may:

• design work schedules
• organize records concerning investors, employees and services
• communicate with and mediate for employees, medical staff and department administrators
• work with other administrators and executives to meet the goals of the organization
• represent the facilities or systems in meetings

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that health care administrators make around $88,580 a year. This occupational field is expected to grow 23 percent by 2022. Professional certification and licensing organizations for health care administrators include the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE).

Some of the high-growth healthcare administration careers include the following:

1. Nursing Home Administrators

Nursing home administrators work in nursing home or residential care facilities. They manage staff, admissions, finances and the care of the buildings and facilities. The position requires both health care and business acumen. In addition to a bachelor’s degree in health care administration, pursuing this career involves completing a state-approved program, which may include licensing exams.

2. Clinical Managers

Clinical managers are administrative and medical professionals who work in doctor’s offices, clinics, long-term residential facilities and outpatient facilities. Their main responsibility is to manage the staff, manage the recruitment, design and implement policies, and evaluate the services and successful practices of the facility. They may handle communication and financial decisions of the facility.

3. Health Information Managers

This may be one of the fastest growing occupations in the health care administration field. Health information managers are responsible for the security and integrity of health-related data. Health information managers ensure the quality, accuracy, accessibility and security of patient records and data.

Managers often begin as technicians who work directly with data. Health information managers must have a working knowledge of the vocabularies and the classification systems used by the technicians. Information technology and data management activities are part of the day-to-day responsibilities of a health information manager.