Healthcare Management Introduction
Never has the management of healthcare been more in the forefront of public awareness. With healthcare itself a topic of discussion in government, news media, and public opinion, great incentive exists for management careers in this exciting, thought provocative field. Knowing some history of healthcare management, as well as looking at what it entails today and its probable future, is essential in considering it a viable career match. Moreover, understanding what’s needed to pursue a healthcare management degree or enroll in a healthcare management program is essential for getting started in that direction.
What Does Healthcare Management Encompass Today?
Healthcare management is the backbone of facilities such as hospitals or clinics, the behind-the-scenes prerequisite that enables a facility to deliver quality health services. Such management consists of professionals partnered with doctors, nurses, and other practitioners and caregivers to make sure that safe, comfortable, and outreaching services are available to all who need them. While their primary concern is business operation, their long-range goals revolve around community health and the people being served.
Healthcare management is often described as health services administration, with those in the field labeled invariably as healthcare mangers, administrators, or executives. Practically speaking, their roles entail the management of today’s hospitals, clinics and their supportive operations and organizations, such as insurance and managed care companies, also government regulatory and policy-making agencies like departments of public health. And as such, these professionals, though invisible to most as they labor, are essential in making certain that their organizations have the medical, operational, and financial tools to serve patients and communities.
As skilled, highly trained professionals, they support the efforts of hands-on personnel like doctors and nurses who are more visible as they perform their tasks. Moreover, they provide educational information and communication to the community regarding health concerns, through announcements, publications, programs and more. This is important in times of crisis when accurate, timely information must get to the public. In that capacity, they support the hospitals and healthcare organizations in their roles as reliable community resources.
Healthcare Management Has Had a Steadily Emerging History
The management of healthcare has not always been as we know it today, for it evolved as a career field based upon the progress of medical science and hospital growth. In fact, until the early 1900′s, very little improvement in patient health was attributable to hospitals. Wealthier people had in-home nursing care, the poor generally relegated to hospitals for lack of anyone or the money to care for them. Thanks to modern surgery and its attendant anesthesia, as well as the discovery of antibiotics in the late 1800′s and early twentieth century, hospitals began to be a place for healing and recovery from suffering. Thus, by 1925, the number of U.S. hospitals skyrocketed from under 200 to about 7,000. Needless to say, with hospital roles changing, more supervision of their operations was needed.
Those early hospital managers or administrators were known as superintendents, though most had little specific training for the enormous jobs before them. Many nurses, indeed, took over the responsibilities that accompany running a healthcare facility, then representing over half of the members of the AHA, or American Hospital Association. Finally, in 1900, the first-ever hospital administration program of study for nurses was established, its focus on health economics. It was not until 1927, though, that graduates of the first healthcare management degree program appeared.
Success for the field and entry into the degreed healthcare management program was not immediate, though. Indeed, it floundered, resurfacing as a graduate career option with the advent of a 1929 book entitled “Hospital Administration, A Career: The Need for Trained Executives for a Billion Dollar Business and How They May Be Trained.” The book proposed graduate-degree training for the administration of hospitals and other facilities and organizations with a medical focus and supported an emerging field recognized then, as today, as the social and business underpinning of health facilities. Powerfully influenced were those interested in studying at a healthcare management school or pursuing a healthcare management degree. Today, the desire to earn a healthcare management degree remains strong, as many view it as essential for a long-term and rewarding career.
The Future Holds Great Career Aspirations for the Management of Healthcare
The future looks increasingly bright for healthcare administration and management as medical science expands by leaps and bounds, medical facilities along with it. Thus, for those who have a strong interest in health and its place in the community, as well as in business, it’s important to first obtain an undergraduate or bachelor’s degree. Additionally, some schools, colleges offer bachelor’s degrees based upon concentration in a healthcare management program. And while a bachelor’s degree, particularly one concentrated in that specific area of study and providing field initiation, may translate into an entry level position, it‚Äôs preferential to obtain a graduate or master’s degree in healthcare administration or management. Attending a healthcare management school, whether for an initial or graduate degree, ensures an exciting future in a field that shows no evidence of slowing down.
The future of healthcare administration is wide open. Its very substance hinges upon continuing changes in health insurance and advances in medical technology. This is intensified by an increasing demand for services not only for healing and recovery, but also for prevention and analysis through sophisticated testing and equipment that only fifty years ago was unfathomable. Wherever the growing future of healthcare and its management goes, it is clearly the time for it to reign supreme as an outstanding career option.