A healthcare administrator works in hospitals, clinics and other healthcare institutions, where they provide a management function. The duties of a healthcare administrator can encompass a wide range of activities, such as recruiting and organizing the institution’s staff, maintaining a safe and clean working environment, as well as organizing the installation of new equipment that can be of benefit for the operation of their department. Additionally, healthcare administrators are responsible for managing the budget of their institution and control its spending to a given norm.
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A Bachelor’s degree in a medicine-related field is required to become a healthcare administrator. A degree in administration can also be useful, though the candidate must also display some medical knowledge in order to become accepted to the position. Furthermore, most hospitals and clinics have the tendency to only hire candidates with a given number of working years, to ensure their top performance and their ability to handle problems appropriately.
Being a healthcare administrator can be surprisingly rewarding, despite the common associations some people make with the job in regards to its working hours and workload imposed over those who practice it. In reality, the annual salary can go between $47,000 – $99,000, and the job isn’t as inflexible in its working hours as some people commonly believe – it can actually be a very well-adjusted job with lots of potential to be rewarded for additional effort put into it.
