Characteristics of the Best Healthcare Administrators and Managers

Great Careers Start Here

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The best healthcare administrators and managers are knowledgeable and skilled in healthcare delivery. They understand how the overall system works and use their skillset to improve operations. They make ethical decisions, solve problems, delegate work to their team, develop good working relationships, and have a passion for what they do.

1. Healthcare Managers Have a Passion for Healthcare

To thrive as a healthcare manager, you need to love the work you do. Your passion for the job can fuel you to wake up in the morning, ready and eager to face the day. It helps you take on challenges more calmly and drives you to find innovative solutions that advance your organization. Passion is also contagious. When your staff sees how invested you are in the job, it can motivate them to work harder and to care about the job they do.

2. Compassion for Patients

Even if you’re not involved in direct patient care, you want what’s best for your patients because you care about them. They are why you chose a healthcare profession. They’re why you have a job and the reason your organization exists. Your compassion for patients helps to ensure they receive the best care possible. With the patient as your number one priority, you’re more driven to make sure that operations run smoothly, from hiring the right healthcare professionals for your facility to submitting insurance claims quickly and efficiently.

3. Healthcare Managers Solve Problems

As a healthcare manager, you need to be a good problem solver. From internal staff conflicts and employee turnover to billing issues and technical glitches, your job is to make sure things run smoothly. And you can’t do that if you can’t solve issues as they arise. You need to be able to shift gears quickly, think critically, and come up with solutions that are beneficial, economical, and resourceful.

4. Healthcare Managers Have Excellent Interpersonal Skills

As a manager, you need to get along with just about everyone. If you build good relationships with your staff, supervisors, and outside vendors, you can be more effective at your job. The way to do that is to start with good communication tactics. Communicate often and be as transparent as possible. Be kind and encouraging, to motivate and build up your team. Around doctors and nurses, be sure to use proper medical terminology, but use laymen’s terms when communicating with patients and their families. Also, make sure to carefully listen and try to view situations from others’ perspectives.

5. Ethical Judgment and Decision Making

When tough decisions need to be made, always stick to your ethical principles. Good ethics can help guide you through challenges and point you to the right answers, even if they aren’t always the easy ones. For example, you might need to disclose a medical error that was made to ensure patient safety, even if it could harm the reputation of your facility. An ethical culture is fostered from the top down, so your ethical behavior sets an example to others of how they should behave.

6. Healthcare Managers Are Able to Delegate

No one can do it all. It takes a team of people to make an organization run smoothly and to handle the myriad tasks that must be carried out each day. As a healthcare manager, you sometimes need to delegate work to other members of the team. With their strengths and weaknesses in mind, you can choose the people who will best perform the job. And if they need extra coaching, you can build them up by sharing your knowledge, expertise, and experience.

7. Open to Lifelong Learning

Healthcare is an ever-changing industry. New laws, technologies, and processes come along and it’s up to you to keep up with them. As the industry evolves, your skillset should evolve too. You should be open to learning new things and view it as a way of staying competitive. No patient wants to receive treatments that were considered cutting-edge a long time ago—they want to receive modern care. By staying current, you can help yourself, your organization, and your patients.

How to Acquire Healthcare Management Skills

Are you interested in a career as a healthcare manager? Charter College offers a Bachelor of Science in Health Care Administration that can prepare you for a new career in the thriving healthcare industry. The program can be completed in as few as 15 months, entirely online. You learn how the healthcare system works, how to use data to make decisions, and the economics of healthcare. Through your coursework, you can also hone your leadership, communication, and customer management skills. And our instructors have years of experience in healthcare. Call 888-200-9842 or fill out the form to learn more.

888.200.9942