The global healthcare industry has seen a surge of transformations lately. In turn, healthcare professionals are now looking at less traditional and more diverse career paths. A significant part of this transformation is turning away from performing medical procedures inside hospitals’ confines and performing them at clinics and other private practices. This shift is why there’s an increased demand for health services administrators to supervise these medical practices as they become a successful enterprise.
A healthcare administrator’s profession incorporates medicine, policy, and business. They’re responsible for managing the human and financial resources and ensuring the delivery of exceptional health services, including:
- Administering and managing hospital services
- Managing patient databases
- Developing health insurance policies for agencies
- Creating health-oriented budgets for organizations
Professionals in this field get exposure to various aspects of healthcare. These aspects can range from employee relations, patient information to insurance maintenance. Plus, they can choose to work in administration, resource development, and the public health sector. Most people seem to be under the impression that health administrators only have employment opportunities in medical facilities and hospitals. In reality, they have plenty of other employment options, including physician’s clinics, nursing centers, and retirement homes.
Indeed, this profession requires a comprehensive knowledge of the medical field. However, when graduates supplement their knowledge with a management specialization, it can be their road to future glory. To go further in this field, one can enroll in an online master in health administration to reach the maximum level.
Here are seven emerging career paths you can opt for as a health administration specialist:
- Healthcare Consultant
Management analysts who specialize in medicine are commonly known as health consultants. These consultants can help outpatient centers, hospitals, and private practices, generate higher profits, increasing satisfaction, and improve operational efficiency. Besides being in the best 100 jobs in America, health consultants can work up quite an income.
- Health Information Manager
A health information manager is primarily responsible for obtaining and neatly organizing patient information. Often, we can see health information managers working with IT professionals, mainly for software research. This research helps them be in line with federal orders for keeping digital patient records. It’s crucial to ensure patient records’ accuracy and completeness for their usage in research, investigations, and quality control purposes. The main focus of information managers is advanced data management which results in a better quality of care.
- Health Insurance Specialist
For some curious reason, being a health insurance specialist is the most attractive option to entry-level individuals. These specialists work alongside patients and ensure proper reporting of medical procedures and office visits to health insurance companies. Also, these executives hold patient meetings to develop suitable payment plans and discuss appropriate reporting methods for health insurance claims.
Health insurance specialists are indispensable in the financial realm of medicine. However, one must have a firm grasp of essential healthcare codes and medical terminologies to qualify to work in this field. Though most employers will ask for at least a bachelor’s degree from applicants in this field, some organizations also accept those with only associate-level degrees.
- Clinic Administrator
Clinic administrator is just the medical name for regular managers. Similar to managers and supervisors in every other context, they carry out a boatload of duties. These involve but aren’t limited to hiring employees, creating schedules, organizing staff meetings, and providing employee development opportunities. Moreover, a clinic administrator may help maintain the clinic or facility, manage clinic billing, and employ certain organization policies.
Sometimes, designing and implementing marketing campaigns may also come under the domain of these administrators. Though the number of responsibilities can vary with each facility, we can’t deny that a clinic administrator undertakes meaningful responsibilities.
- Hospital CEO
A CEO exists at the highest level of the organizational hierarchy and is the most prestigious administration position. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise if your local hospital’s CEO is a healthcare administration professional. Besides a bachelor’s degree in healthcare administration, one also needs a considerable amount of experience in the healthcare field to excel in this position.
No other job position in medicine has as broad a scope as this one. CEOs are accountable for managing all the departments along with overseeing the day-to-day operations within a medical facility.
When CEOs are concerned, the worlds of patient care and business overlap and are equally crucial for hospitals’ success.
- Nursing Home Administrator
So, what constitutes the job of a nursing home administrator? For starters, these executives’ duties include supervising the administrative and clinical affairs of the nursing home. Some common responsibilities falling into these professionals laps’ include personnel recruitment, staffing decisions, financial management, training, and overseeing medical care.
A nursing home administrator may also assist in other important tasks, such as inspecting the facility’s medical supplies and daily maintenance.
- Training and Development Manager
The world of medicine is brimming with opportunities for health administration professionals. One such option includes managing employee relationships. Training and development managers are essential to enable the proper training of new employees. Also, many medical facilities may employ these managers to create, implement, and assimilate training practices into their organizations.
When a new medical professional join the team, it’s the managers’ job to provide the needed training resources and, if need be, hands-on training. Consequently, this training will contribute to an increase in overall employee efficiency and productivity. Training and development managers play a decisive role in the success of newbies stepping into the medical profession. To qualify for this job, one must acquire a bachelor’s degree, at minimum.
To Summarize
Undoubtedly, the healthcare industry is in a constant growth phase. It can be intimidating, confusing, and overwhelming for fresh graduates to pick one career and stick with it for the rest of their lives. Yet, entering the medical world as a health service administrator is a highly lucrative prospect. This article provided some emerging and profitable career paths in health administration.
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