Healthcare administration is an excellent second career choice for a range of professionals. If you currently work in a medical role, in healthcare in a supportive role, or work in management in any field, then you can transition into healthcare administration. Healthcare administrators help make the entire industry tick. They’re there to make sure that everyone does their job and that it all goes as smoothly as possible.
Administrators are in high demand, and there are plenty of different ways that you can take your career. You can work in many different environments, from medical all the way to research. If you’re interested in making the change, start with this guide:
What is healthcare administration?
So what does a healthcare administrator do? In simplest terms, they are the bridge between medical staff, patients, and any auxiliary departments like finance or legal. They will support, manage, maintain and lead their workforce so that everything works as efficiently as possible.
They are the leaders that make it all possible, even if they never treat patients directly. They work in hospitals, clinics, records departments, research institutions, and even universities.
Roles in healthcare administration
Many different roles fall under the healthcare administrator umbrella. You could work as a hospital administrator all the way to a patient services representative. You can work as a manager, a technologist, an assistant, or even in an executive role.
How to become a healthcare administrator
As healthcare administrators aren’t healthcare workers, you don’t need a specialist degree to get started. You will, however, need to have some knowledge of how to manage a healthcare setting. These are very large, interconnected systems that need a specialist approach.
You can learn all that you need with either a healthcare administration degree or alternatively with an MBA. Most MBAs today offer a special track that lets you focus on healthcare administration or management.
Tips for success in the field
Earning a degree can help train you in everything that you need to know, but that’s just the start. If you want to succeed in the role, then you need to be prepared to learn on the job as well. There are a lot of individual challenges that you can face as an administrator that they simply cannot teach you in a classroom setting.
Similarly, there are going to be instances where new tools or even regulations come out after you graduate that may change or even completely void some of the things that you were taught.
To succeed in such a fast-paced world, you must be flexible and committed. The best administrators, managers, and advocates stay updated on the changes, big and small, so they can adjust their leadership approach for the better.
That does mean you’ll need to learn continually, but once you graduate, you can learn by reading reports and news articles or even listening if you learn better that way. That, of course, is on top of changing jobs when necessary so that you can advance your career and continue to learn and develop your skills.
We need all the health care workers we can get!!!
Truth!