Healthcare Administration vs. Healthcare Management: What's the Difference?

Healthcare administration and healthcare management are essential for a medical facility to function efficiently. Instead of providing direct medical care to patients, both roles operate within the facility and among staff members.

There are also differences between them, including their duties and educational requirements. Understanding how healthcare administration and management contrast can help you make an informed decision on which one is most ideal for your healthcare career path. You can also evaluate the job requirements and demand to prepare for your desired role and the competitiveness of the job market. Keep reading to gain insight into how both positions contribute to healthcare services for patients.
 

What Is Healthcare Administration?

Healthcare administration focuses on the staffing needs of a medical organization or institution, such as a hospital, nursing facility, outpatient care center, or physician's office. Professionals who work in administration strive to gain and manage quality staff to ensure the facility runs smoothly and efficiently. Healthcare administrators also focus on what kind of services they offer to their patients. Though they don't personally administer medical treatment to their facility's patients, they play a large role in deciding what treatments are available.

Administrators might be responsible for an entire facility or a specific department. They are in charge of keeping records for the staff, making schedules, and providing human resource services.

The nature of an individual position under the healthcare administration umbrella changes depending on the job description. Smaller facilities have a smaller staff, which means fewer healthcare administrators are required to maintain them. The larger the hospital or organization, the more the administration tasks get spread around to a larger team of professionals, each with their own responsibility to their place of work. Here are examples of job titles within healthcare administration:

• Home healthcare administrator
• Hospice care director
• Health services manager
• Medical records manager
• Clinic director
• Explore more Healthcare Administration job titles

What Is HealthCare Management?

Healthcare management focuses on the operations of a medical facility as a whole, not just its individual departments and the staff members who work there. Healthcare managers help ensure that the organization is financially stable, has adequate supplies, and is capable of meeting its goals. They run the business side of their places of work to ensure the doctors, physicians, therapists, nurses, and others who work there can keep providing their services and receive their salaries. 

Healthcare management professionals often work side-by-side with their administrative counterparts. Healthcare managers work most commonly in hospitals, but they also work in any organization or facility large enough to warrant an employee solely dedicated to running the facility.  Every healthcare organization, business, and institution needs someone to look after their finances. That's where healthcare management teams perform their duties. Here are examples of job titles within healthcare management:

• Executive director
• Social welfare administrator
• Nursing home manager
• Hospital administrator
• Public health director

Job Duties

One difference between healthcare administration and healthcare management is the types of job responsibilities. While tasks often depend on the medical facility and its needs, some duties are unique to administration and management. The main goal of both roles is to ensure the medical facility has the resources it needs to function properly and provide quality healthcare to patients.
 

What Does a Healthcare Administrator Do?

Healthcare administrators work directly with the people who work directly with patients, but they rarely work with the patients themselves. They will create schedules for employees to ensure there are enough people during working hours to provide services to patients, maintain patient records, and perform human resource services for the employees. They might take on some responsibilities of hiring and training new employees to replace outgoing ones or fill new positions. 

Healthcare administrators also aim to ensure their facility or organization is up to code and always following regulations and laws. Part of this includes tracking information about the population health of the facility's clients, analyzing risks of treatments, meeting with governmental bodies, and communicating with department heads to ensure that everything is working in accordance with the law and the facility's own policies.

Here's a list of common duties for professionals who work in healthcare administration:

• Develop and implement policies for employees, as well as communicate with employees about policy changes
• Keep an inventory of the facility's stock and supplies
• Develop a supply chain management plan to increase efficiency
• Ensure that the facility and its departments adhere to budgets and plans
• Measure the population health of patients to measure the success of the facility
• Create, maintain, and update filing systems for patient medical records
• Measure risks and develop plans for risk management
• Explore what a Healthcare Administrator does on a daily basis

What Does a Healthcare Manager Do?

Healthcare managers handle responsibilities that relate to a medical facility's budget. They help ensure the business side of their facility is running smoothly. This means ensuring that employees have the tools and equipment they need to do their jobs well, scrutinizing department budgets, and supplying the facility with everything it needs to provide patients with the best care available. 

Much of the healthcare management professional's responsibility—especially at higher levels within the field—is researching, creating, and implementing a business plan for the facility. Like healthcare administrators, healthcare management professionals may also keep track of laws and regulations to ensure their facility is in accordance. However, healthcare administrators may focus more on medical regulations and laws than healthcare management professionals. 

Tasks that a healthcare manager might complete regularly include the following:

• Maintain records for the facility, including supplies and equipment information, services rendered, and data on current patient counts.
• Meet with investors and boards with interest or funds in the facility.
• Search for ways to improve the facility's efficiency.
• Promote employee engagement to boost productivity and enhance performance.

Education and Experience Requirements

Employers typically require candidates to have a specific educational background and amount of work experience to qualify for jobs. A bachelor's degree is the minimum education requirement to work in healthcare administration and healthcare management, but each subfield also requires a certain discipline.

Aspiring healthcare administrators may pursue an associate degree, which may be necessary for an entry-level position in the healthcare industry. Still, employers may prefer candidates who have a bachelor's degree. For example, a Bachelor of Science in Healthcare Administration at Concorde prepares students for positions that oversee the operations of medical institutions, and they can earn the degree in as few as 24 months, depending on your course load.

Professionals who want to work in healthcare management may also need a bachelor's degree, which can help them understand business operations. Students can learn how to maintain the confidentiality of patient records, establish and maintain organizational budgets, and uphold government policies for businesses. 

Many positions in healthcare management call for experience with accounting and business management rather than health-related areas. Keep in mind that healthcare management is more about business than healthcare itself.
 

Job Demand

Pursuing a job with high demand can expose you to greater opportunities to advance your career in a field that interests you. Both healthcare administration and healthcare management have a positive job outlook. 

According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment for medical and health services managers has a projected increase of 29% by 2033, which is a faster rate than other professions. Approximately 61,400 job openings may arise every year throughout the next decade. More jobs may become available as professionals retire from the healthcare field or leave to pursue careers in other industries.

As older generations continue to age and require care, the demand for healthcare providers, such as doctors and nurses, increases. This contributes to a higher demand for healthcare administrators and managers to supervise operations in hospitals and doctors' offices. The advancement of technology, which leads to more organizations storing patient records electronically, may offer prospects to healthcare administrators and managers who know how to manage systems with these records.

As with any new career choice, the first step in becoming a healthcare professional starts with education. Contact us today for more information on how to get started on the next step in your professional life. Whether you want to work more on the administrative side or in management, you can train to start your healthcare career now at Concorde.