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Healthcare Administration and Management Schools
By an allied health world contributing writer
Published: February 2nd, 2010
How will healthcare administration schools prepare graduates for the career?
As hospitals and healthcare facilities have evolved over the 20th, and into the 21st century, they have become behemoth, consolidated organizations comprised of dozens of different specialized departments with sprawling campuses that take up many city blocks. These hospitals and networked healthcare facilities need dedicated managers and administrators to handle the complicated tasks of coordinating facility resources and managing the hundreds of staff members who perform dozens of different jobs. These are the roles of healthcare administrators and managers in today’s medical communities.Wherever there is a large staff of medical workers within a healthcare facility, there’ll be a well-organized, articulate, highly motivated
professional there to maximize the quality of patient care, while being accountable to the corporate executive officers and shareholders for running an efficient organization.
How do medical professionals become healthcare administrators?
Healthcare workers advancing through their careers and keeping their options open to managerial and administrative job openings within their medical facilities are often strong candidates for these career opportunities. Despite the familiarity an individual may have with the applied medical techniques they’ve learned after years of working as a practitioner in a given field of medicine, the tremendous demands that are placed on healthcare administrators and managers will require them to receive additional schooling before being eligible for these jobs. Healthcare administration schools provide the administrative and managerial training necessary to prepare graduates to meet the unique challenges of this profession so as to keep hospitals and other medical facilities functioning smoothly and efficiently.What degrees do aspiring healthcare administrators pursue?
Both online and campus based institutions offer successive programs in healthcare administration from the associate’s level, all the way up to the rigorous and challenging doctorate degree programs. Job postings for administrative and managerial positions in hospitals most often call for a master’s or doctorate degree; however, experience can be seen as being just as valuable as an advanced post-graduate healthcare administration degree. As a rule, a bachelor’s degree is expected of applicants for these professions, but it needn’t always be specific to healthcare administration.
Conversely, there are healthcare administration degrees specific to certain areas of focus that are also available. These field-specific degrees are often best suited to those who have already made a medical career out of a specific area of focus, but wish to move into administrative and managerial positions within that field.
Although the various degrees specific to healthcare administration will be best suited to preparing graduates for the unique challenges of these careers, it is worth noting that general business degrees along with supporting work experience can suffice in providing an in to one of these amazing career opportunities. The following represents the degrees offered by healthcare administration schools that are most often held by individuals employed as health facility managers and administrators, as well as those degrees most often specified in job postings by prospective employers:
- Associate of Arts in Business Administration (AABA)
- Associate of Arts in Healthcare Administration (AA)
- Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA)
- Bachelor of Science in Healthcare Administration (BS)
- Bachelor of Organizational Management (BA)
- Master of Business Administration (MBA)
- Master of Healthcare Administration (MHA)
- Master of Healthcare Management (MBA)
- Master of Organizational Management (MA)
- Doctorate in Healthcare Administration (PhD)