Healthcare management is all of the work involved in ensuring smooth operations of healthcare facilities of all kinds, including hospitals, clinics, drug addiction rehabilitation and treatment centers, and elderly care facilities like nursing homes and hospices. As you might expect, these healthcare professionals have wide-ranging responsibilities, including efficient management of day-to-day healthcare facility operations, ensuring availability and maintenance of medical equipment, developing organizational goals and priorities, determining budgets and billing practices, representing the organization to the public, the media, and other audiences.
The work of healthcare management professionals is of particularly critical importance during a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. They must manage healthcare facilities under enormous and unprecedented stress, as they attempt to maintain supply chains of essential equipment like testing kits, ventilators, and personal protective equipment (PPE) for staff such as N-95 masks, gloves, and respirators. They also must determine proper staffing levels and safety procedures to protect both healthcare workers and patients while delivering emergency care. The public relations function of healthcare managers is also of heightened importance to maintain the flow of information about all the measures being taken.
The work of a healthcare management professional is closely linked to healthcare administration, and in fact healthcare managers may take on this role in small practices.. However, in larger organizations healthcare administration is typically a separate job that interfaces more directly with the staff of the facility. An administrator’s responsibilities include the recruiting, hiring, and evaluation of personnel, determining efficient administrative procedures, and working with doctors and nurses to ensure they are able to provide health services effectively.
Thus, healthcare administrators often serve as liaisons between healthcare managers and individual employees who are responsible for actually carrying out the work of the facility.