Healthcare Admin’s Crucial Role in the Medical World

Certain jobs in the healthcare field receive less appreciation and notoriety than they should.

Whether this is referring to the little tasks that nurses perform on the job each day, or the attention to detail that hospital nutritionists and dietitians must have when planning meals for patients, one thing is certain: the healthcare sector is filled with numerous, stressful jobs that go unnoticed.

We all remember our doctors, but all of the jobs within the healthcare niche are crucially important.

Today we’ll be examining a commonly overlooked sphere of the healthcare industry: the role of healthcare administrators and leadership professionals.

What Exactly is Health Admin?

This sector of healthcare sparked my interest personally, after a long conversation with my grandmother. She’s been working several healthcare admin jobs for as long as I’ve been alive, as it turns out.

Up until having this conversation, if someone were to ask me who the leaders at hospitals are, I’d likely have instantly thought of doctors or RN’s.

While physicians and nurses are obviously fundamentally important, they don’t take on all of the leadership roles and the business/planning side of things.

This is where those working health administration jobs flourish. These workers are healthcare leaders, as they tackle the immensely difficult task of keeping up with the modern advancements in medicine. They must also focus heavily on the associated costs of contemporary healthcare.

Simply put, administrators lead many business aspects of healthcare.

They are the backbone behind developing, organizing, and overlooking healthcare facilities and corollary staff. Health admin professionals ensure that budgets and associated costs are in order. Cohesiveness and efficiency are always important to their line of work.

In addition to all of this, health admin roles routinely include providing assistance with human resources, as well as ensuring compliance with state and federal laws and regulations. And they are main points of contact for most legal issues.

Administrators in Every Healthcare Field

It’s important to recognize that health admin jobs are important all throughout the world of healthcare--not just at hospitals. Wherever there are health-centric jobs, there are administrators.

An article by Monster elaborates:

“Leading the way are hospitals, which employ about 30 percent of all healthcare administrators, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. But hospitals aren't the only providers in town. Healthcare administration grads can also find jobs with:

• Group physician practices
• Clinics
• Nursing homes and elder-care facilities
• Home health organizations
• Outpatient care centers
• Mental health organizations
• Rehabilitation centers
• Consulting firms
• Companies that develop, manufacture and market healthcare supplies and equipment
• Pharmaceutical and educational organizations”

Once more familiar with this line of work it’s easy to see how widespread these jobs are, and how they are a foundational key to success and safety.

Health Admin Professionals Keep Everyone Safe

Those working as health administrators instill ethics of positivity and safety to the entire working force, wherever they are at.

A resource by the National Center for Healthcare Leadership (NAHL) points out that health admin professionals strive for the following principles:

• Accountability as well as impact and influence
• Achievement and strategic orientation
• Collaboration and team leadership
• Communication and financial skills
• Organizational awareness and innovative thinking
• Professionalism and self-confidence

While administrators job is to keep everything functioning as a ‘well oiled machine’ they keep the safety of both patients and employees on the forefront of their minds.

As USA Today puts it, in their article, In health care industry, who will keep workers safe?:

“Healthcare workers suffer more injuries and illnesses on the job than those in any other industry…these (healthcare) workers had about 654,000 workplace injuries and illnesses in 2015, about 152,000 more than the next most afflicted industry sector, manufacturing.

‘Establishing a culture of safety for safe patient handling and mobility is a paradigm shift, much like wearing gloves and protective equipment for all blood and body fluid precautions was 20 years ago,’ said Suzy Harrington, director of the American Nurses Association's health and safety division.”

So the next time you are at the doctor's office, challenge yourself to think more critically about who you owe a big thank you to: it’s not just the friendly nurse or the wise doctor.

The backend legwork of administrators segues all avenues of healthcare, from patient to physician. It’s their role to keep us all safe and they deserve recognition too!