Examine Health Care Administration Schools, Stat!
by Dawn Papandrea
After watching the entire season of "Grey's Anatomy" on DVD, you secretly wish you would have gone into the medical field. But come on -- deep down you know you don't have the biology background or chemistry competency, not to mention your queasiness factor. What you do have are business skills and the desire to use them in a way that helps others. If this sounds like your dilemma, the good news is health administration may the answer to your career conundrum.
Health administration schools can prepare you for a field in which you'll manage resources, procedures, and systems to help ensure that patients' needs and wants are met. Also called health care executives or health care managers, those who graduate with health care administration degrees basically supervise the delivery of health care for hospitals, clinics, doctor's offices, and other medical facilities.
"Given the way healthcare is growing, mergers and rollups notwithstanding, there's an increasing demand for good healthcare administrators," assures Joyce L. Gioia author of the business bestseller 'Impending Crisis, Too Many Jobs, Too Few People' (OakHill Press, 2002).
That's because as the health care industry continues to expand and diversify with the aging population, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of health care administrators is expected to grow faster than average for all occupations through 2014.
Examine Health Care Administration Schools
So now you know what those in health care administration careers do, you have to start researching health care administration schools to figure out which degree program is right for you.
At health care administration schools, colleges and universities, you have the choice of pursuing bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees. A bachelor's degree is adequate for some entry-level positions in smaller facilities, says the BLS, while a master's degree in health services administration, long-term care administration, health sciences, public health, public administration, or business administration is the standard credential for most positions. In any case, general health care administration degrees, or those in related subject areas, abound, as do many specialized programs. In 2005, for instance, 70 schools had accredited programs leading to the master's degree in health services administration, according to the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education.
Is all the schooling worth it? You decide -- median annual earnings of those in health care administration careers were $67,430 in May 2004, but varies by type and size of the facility, as well as by level of responsibility.
Health administration schools can prepare you for a field in which you'll manage resources, procedures, and systems to help ensure that patients' needs and wants are met. Also called health care executives or health care managers, those who graduate with health care administration degrees basically supervise the delivery of health care for hospitals, clinics, doctor's offices, and other medical facilities.
"Given the way healthcare is growing, mergers and rollups notwithstanding, there's an increasing demand for good healthcare administrators," assures Joyce L. Gioia author of the business bestseller 'Impending Crisis, Too Many Jobs, Too Few People' (OakHill Press, 2002).
That's because as the health care industry continues to expand and diversify with the aging population, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of health care administrators is expected to grow faster than average for all occupations through 2014.
Examine Health Care Administration Schools
So now you know what those in health care administration careers do, you have to start researching health care administration schools to figure out which degree program is right for you.
At health care administration schools, colleges and universities, you have the choice of pursuing bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees. A bachelor's degree is adequate for some entry-level positions in smaller facilities, says the BLS, while a master's degree in health services administration, long-term care administration, health sciences, public health, public administration, or business administration is the standard credential for most positions. In any case, general health care administration degrees, or those in related subject areas, abound, as do many specialized programs. In 2005, for instance, 70 schools had accredited programs leading to the master's degree in health services administration, according to the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education.
Is all the schooling worth it? You decide -- median annual earnings of those in health care administration careers were $67,430 in May 2004, but varies by type and size of the facility, as well as by level of responsibility.
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