Health Care Administrator
Health care organizations require that activities run smoothly and efficiently to improve the quality of the services provided. The management of the organization has to ensure that the way the institution runs spurs proper service delivery, and coordination of activities is efficient. I visited a health care center and interviewed one of the management administrators to gain a deeper knowledge about the management of the health care institutions. After learning in class about the process of management in health care organizations, I had to look for experienced officers from the field. In this paper, I present the responses that I received from the administrator during the interview. The presentation is subdivided in parts including the background of the administrator, the role of the administrator in the health care institution, the knowledge level required by the administrator and the regulatory compliance.
Background of the administrator
The administrator I interviewed is Mrs. Pauline Parker; she was a calm and confident woman who seemed to be contended with her job. She was very passionate about what she does and was willing to share information. According to her, she was born and raised in a family where her mother was a teacher, and the father was a health care physician. Being in a closer relationship with her father, she decided to follow her father’s footsteps into the health care practice. She enrolled in a medical college where she pursued a degree in health care administration. She says it was her passion to venture in healthcare management. To add on her degree, Pauline is also a trained nurse and thus has knowledge on what the medical field entails. She has been managing the institution for the past three years, but she says her experience in management field is now ten years. She previously held a position of assistant health care administrator before her current role. To add on her qualifications, Pauline outlined to me that she has since learnt and attained general knowledge in accounting, budgeting, strategic planning and health care ethics and law. Refresher training and knowledge acquisition, as she explains, helped her much in management of the diverse field and departments that are present in the health care organization. According to Harrison (2013), an effective administrator should be flexible and equipped with knowledge for managing the diverse healthcare field. She is passionate about her position, and she says her happiness grows when she satisfies the needs of clients and the staff of the health care center (Harrison, 2013).
The role of the administrator
According to Mrs. Pauline Parker, she plays a very diverse role in the operations of the health care center. Her training in management has given her the ability and potential to accomplish managerial roles within the institution. Her main role is to direct and oversee the main operations. This involves managing and delegating duties to the health care practitioners within the hospital and analyzing their performance. As she clearly stated, she accomplishes the delegation of duties by analyzing critical operation services and delegating duties to the respective professionals. Besides, she comes up with a duty roster that indicates and delegates duties to practitioners at specified time intervals. Assigning duties, she says is the most challenging role; however, because of her wealth of experience, she is able to accomplish it without much struggle. The managers of health care centers need to display good management skills, ability to coordinate operations, inspire employees and solve problems (Langebeer & Helton, 2015). Mrs. Pauline says she has those qualities and that she is comfortable with the role
Additionally, Mrs. Pauline says that it is her role to ensure the equipment and other facilities in the hospital are adequate and in good working conditions to facilitate service delivery. She monitors equipment and machine operability by doing regular assessments and evaluation in order to ensure that the machines are safe and compliant to safety regulations. She is also tasked with making sure the procured equipment are delivered and meet the conditions to operate in the health care facility. The staff and services they offer also fall under her role. She is tasked to ensure that the staff members deliver quality services to the clients. To analyze this, she says she frequently deploys quality assurance evaluators to perform client satisfaction assessments, employee assessment and monitoring and operations efficiency (Harrison, 2013). Since she took over, Mrs. Pauline says that she has managed to improve the quality of services offered by the staff, boosted customer satisfaction rates and increased employee retention rates by commendable margins.
The administrator also manages the expenditures of the health care center. Mrs. Pauline certifies and approves any transaction that the health care center is involved in and controls the use of finances. By undertaking the role professionally, she says that the organization has been able to cut on cost, reduce wastage, and increase efficiency in financial management and reporting. Mrs. Pauline reports to the chief executive officer of the health care institution, who then reports to the board of directors to officiate and approve projects. Besides, she works together with the senior medical officers within the health care center on either advisory roles or consultation regarding human resource and operations.
Knowledge needed to be an administrator
According to Mrs. Pauline Parker, one needs to be educated before becoming an administrator in a health care facility. The minimum requirement according to her is a degree in health care management or business administration and management. However, the former is recommended because it is important for one to be knowledgeable in the health care field so that the management of the services becomes an easier task. Therefore, if an individual have knowledge in the operations of health care institutions and has the qualifications that can enable him or her to be an administrator, then she can effectively be hired to execute the mandate. According to (Harrison, 2013) health care administration majorly entails service delivery, and therefore, adequate knowledge in management, administration and financial management is necessary for one to undertake an administrative post in healthcare institutions (Harrison, 2013).
On top of educational and professional requirements, Pauline notes that it is important that an administrator must have capacity to conduct careful budgeting, be able to take tough decisions, and have capacity to maintain cooperation and respect among all professionals. In addition, Pauline says that healthcare administrator are involved in establishing standards, developing strategic policies and implementing employee procedure manuals that support the vision and mission of the facility (Drummond et al. 2015).
Regulations and compliance
In order to execute mandates as a healthcare administrator, one needs to be passionate and qualified too. This requires that an individual be trained in healthcare administration by acquiring a healthcare administration degree. The roles that an individual plays include managing the services and facilities within the health care institution. Additionally, the administrator manages finances, equipment, and machinery and oversees assessments and evaluation of safety standards and compliance. Further, the administrator takes an advisory role in advising human resource, ensuring safety of employees, reporting to the CEO on matters that relate to operations and quality controls of the health facility. Healthcare sector is a highly regulated field; therefore, the administrator should comply with Sarbanes-Oxley financial management and reporting act, institutional and professional codes of ethics and corporate governance regulations.
REFERENCES
Drummond, M. F., Sculpher, M. J., Claxton, K., Stoddart, G. L., & Torrance, G. W. (2015). Methods for the economic evaluation of health care programmes. London: Oxford university press.
Harrison, S. (2013). Managing the National Health Service: Shifting the Frontier?. New York: Springer.
Langabeer II, J. R., & Helton, J. (2015). Health care operations management. Washington, DC. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
