Pursuing a healthcare management degree opens up many different career options. If you enjoy undertaking high level administrative tasks, this degree program may be the one for you. This degree program prepares you to enter into a career in healthcare administration on an entry level. The possibilities are endless, from managing patient care activities to ensuring employee retention. The healthcare industry as a whole is expected to grow tremendously over the next several years. Employment of medical and health services managers is expected to grow by 23 percent from 2012 to 2022.
Like most degree programs, a typical course of study takes two or four years, depending if you choose an associate or a bachelor program.
What You Learn as a Healthcare Management Student
This program of study covers a broad range of topics from business management skills to the hard sciences. In the management portion of the program you cover:
- Ethics of healthcare
- Finance and legal matters pertaining to the healthcare industry
- Human resources regulations and policy making
- Accounting and statistics topics, including the need to follow GAAP and healthcare specific regulations
- Improving workplace productivity
Potential Careers for Healthcare Managers
Those with a healthcare management degree can seek employment in a wide variety of places. Hospitals are, and will continue to be, the single largest employer of healthcare professionals, but nursing homes, doctor offices, clinics and many other medical providers also need oversight and managerial expertise. Many different career paths become available with this degree.
An associates in healthcare management can be enough to gain a position in a small healthcare provider or with a larger institution. In both environments, your management options could include everything from patient care improvements to data retention. Some with this degree prefer to work with computer systems while others work with employees to better streamline patient care activities. Increasing regulations on both patient confidentiality and quality of care make professionals with a need blend of managerial and science skills highly sought after in the healthcare industry.