The ultimate goal of health administration, which is the business management side of a medical organization, is to ensure that clients receive the highest quality of service at the lowest possible cost. It is typically composed of two functional areas, with a health administrator at the helm: the clinical side, which refers to health care professionals and their practice, and the non-clinical side, which includes all other personnel. Health administration specialists are required in doctor’s clinics, hospitals, and chemical rehabilitation centers to regulate the types of services provided by the institution.
The functions of health administration are distributed among several departments, each headed by an administrator, in a medical center where daily operations are performed by hundreds or even thousands of employees. It is common to find administrators in charge of patient services, medical billing and finance, human resource management, and a variety of other departments, each of which is responsible for providing a specific service so that the facility as a whole can function. Each of these department heads reports to the hospital’s top administrator, who collaborates with the board of trustees to ensure that all of the hospital’s needs are met. This panel’s other job is to create policies that ensure the hospital’s administration runs smoothly and is financially viable.
In a doctor’s clinic where the practicing physicians are the actual owners, the health administration scenario is much more streamlined, because they frequently take charge of clinical supervision without further assistance. This frees up the health-care administrator to focus on day-to-day operations, such as patient concerns, manpower, training, and a variety of public-relations responsibilities. The only tasks that are typically delegated are those that require a significant amount of time, such as bookkeeping, health insurance claims, record keeping, and supply procurement. While the owners are in charge of the clinical area, the health administrator is in charge of ensuring the business’s long-term viability.
Maintaining the balance between satisfactory service and profitability is one of the most difficult challenges in health care administration. As a result, this industry has used technology to benefit from low-cost labor assistance from home-based workers and outsourcing firms. Health administration now routinely outsources call routing, medical billing, and health information processing so that the department can focus on providing the best possible care to patients. Because even the smallest outpatient systems can function like a much larger organization without increasing payroll or other expenses, this development adds a new dimension to health administration.