Introduction
Successful management of healthcare organizations requires specific knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs). While leaders can learn some of these in classrooms and textbooks, others are innate or developed through experience. Healthcare managers and administrators are in increasing demand as the organizations become more cumbersome and complex. Successful administration is central to quality patient care and the smooth running of hospitals. Therefore, managers and administrators must possess or develop key KSAs to improve every organization they manage.
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
The knowledge required to manage healthcare organizations successfully includes accounting, finance, computing, statistics, industry trends, and new technologies. Accounting knowledge is critical in every management role as it is the language of business. It refers to the processes of recording, interpreting, classifying, and reporting financial transactions and economic data of the company (Ochonma et al., 2018). Various stakeholders use the data to make significant decisions about the organization. Healthcare organizations produce such financial documents for administrators, investors, regulators, managers, staff, and the public. Administrators need to understand financial statements to understand the company’s performance, resource allocation, and important decisions for the organization.
Financial knowledge is necessary to facilitate the manager’s budgeting, projecting expenditures, allocating resources, and making investment choices. Additionally, administrators negotiate with financial institutions, including insurance providers, vendors, and suppliers. Finance knowledge is applicable in managing working capital, choosing long-term investment options, evaluating and planning, handling risks, and contracting (Pittman & Kolakowski, 2020). While administrators make most financial decisions, healthcare managers need to contribute to asset management tasks, procurement of equipment, contracts, negotiations, and fund distribution.
Hospital managers and administrators must have advanced computer knowledge to increase productivity, and become more efficient and effective in their daily tasks. These leaders must analyze huge volumes of data most of the day to establish and understand relationships (Pittman & Kolakowski, 2020). Important skills include spreadsheets, presentations, word processors, and internet knowledge (Ochonma et al., 2018). Spreadsheet software will help the administrators in data analysis and visualization, while word processors will facilitate professional documents, such as memos, contracts, and letters.
Healthcare administrators should have basic statistics knowledge to comprehend numerical data. All hospital data, including expenditures, patient outcomes, and efficacy measures, are presented as numerical data (Pittman & Kolakowski, 2020). The administrator should have enough knowledge to identify links between the data and manipulate it to produce projections and alternatives. Besides, the leaders must stay informed about industry trends and new technologies in the sector. Effective leaders should remain ahead in knowledge to take advantage of opportunities and prevent threats from affecting the business.
Critical skills for healthcare administrators and managers include teambuilding, decision making, strategic planning, interpersonal skills, public speaking, and political skills. Hospitals are one the workplaces that benefit from collaboration and strong teamwork. Failure to collaborate can lead to increased conflicts, lack of trust, low quality of care, and poor support systems (Pittman & Kolakowski, 2020). Therefore, the managers must build effective teams that enhance working together, increase trust, and provide a supportive environment to staff.
Managerial decisions in the healthcare sector profoundly impact patients, staff, and the organization’s performance. As the system becomes more cumbersome and complex, administrators and managers must make decisions quickly and accurately every day. As the environments change in technology, economic, and legal, and ethical dimensions, top administrators can make far-reaching decisions and have immense consequences on individuals and the organization. Therefore, excellent decision-making skills are imperative for top and middle-level management.
Strategic planning skills comprise preparing the organization for the future by considering threats, opportunities, and risks. The skill involves matching a hospital’s vision, mission, core values, goals, and services with the resources available (Ochonma et al., 2018). Strategic planning involves resource allocation and finding the sources of the resources, such as through financing. As such, administrators will get resources from the relevant stakeholders to implement the organizational goals and mission.
Interpersonal or people skills will help administrators communicate efficiently with others and establish and maintain healthy relationships. Managers with excellent people skills also exhibit high emotional intelligence. They use and understand verbal and body language, including facial expressions, words, body posture, gestures, and voice tones (Pittman & Kolakowski, 2020). Interpersonal skills are critical in conflict resolution, negotiations, management, and training. Additionally, the leaders must have excellent public speaking and political skills to be influential leaders in the industry.
In addition to knowledge and skills, healthcare administrators must possess individual abilities for effective leadership. These abilities include stamina, courage, self-security, adaptability, commitment, and lifelong learning. Hospitals are one of the most demanding and physically challenging workplaces. Successful administrators must maintain and cultivate high levels of mental and physical health. Additionally, they should perfect their stress management skills to prevent distractions, poor judgment, and bad or delays in decision making. Part of the stress management process includes balancing understaffing, disrupting social life, being overworked, and demanding the governing board.
Ethical and legal dilemmas are imminent in healthcare administration roles. Therefore, managers and administrators must have enough courage to make the right or most appropriate choices under all circumstances. Such courage will prevent leaders from making decisions out of intimidation and fear. Courage is best coupled with self-security and self-confidence to boost the leader’s authority and command over followers (Pittman & Kolakowski, 2020). Self-doubting administrators will make decisions under the influence of other people, which could not benefit the organization.
Impact of Successful Healthcare Administrators
Successful healthcare administrators lead to reduced readmission rates, improved outcomes for patients and staff, a healthy workplace culture, and patients’ advocacy with the insurance companies. Hospital administrators establish a holistic treatment, checking, and follow-up approach to ensure that all patients are treated for the illness they reported and all other underlying conditions to prevent readmission (Robbins & Davidhizar, 2020). Since most readmissions are for different diseases, effective management establishes a protocol that staff follows to identify, diagnose, and treat every underlying condition. Establishing such protocols and approaches leads to fewer readmissions and improved quality of care.
Administrators make the organization’s decisions, which affect employees and patients. A good healthcare facility reflects excellent management and better outcomes for the entire community. Successful administrators set up a structure that focuses on patient care, optimal resource utilization, and staff wellbeing (Robbins & Davidhizar, 2020). Such a structure is based on quality medical processes, the right technology, and proper management. Ultimately, successful managers and administrators lead to better outcomes for the whole healthcare center.
The hospital leadership establishes its corporate culture and workplace environment. Therefore, a successful administration should establish and maintain a healthy work culture that supports employees to perform at their best and patients towards their recovery goals (Robbins & Davidhizar, 2020). Such an environment encourages nurses, physicians, and other clinical staff to go the extra mile in achieving patients’ goals of recovering. Successful managers combine business management and clinical objectives to create an enabling environment for all hospital staff.
Conclusion
Successful healthcare organizations require specific knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs), which can be learned in classrooms and textbooks, innate, or developed through experience. The knowledge required to manage healthcare organizations successfully includes accounting, finance, computing, statistics, industry trends, and new technologies. On the other hand, critical skills for healthcare administrators and managers include teambuilding, decision making, strategic planning, interpersonal skills, public speaking, and political skills. Additionally, the required abilities include stamina, courage, self-security, adaptability, commitment, and lifelong learning. Successful healthcare administrators lead to reduced readmission rates, improved outcomes for patients and staff, a healthy workplace culture, and patients’ advocacy with the insurance company.
References
Ochonma, O., Nwankwor, A. C., Arize, I., & Emeka I. (2018). Education and hospital manager’s administrative competency: What impact is a higher degree? International Journal of Economics and Business Management, 4(3). Web.
Pittman, J., & Kolakowski, M. (2020). Leading in a complex healthcare ecosystem. Journal of Leadership, Accountability & Ethics, 17(6). Web.
Robbins, B., & Davidhizar, R. (2020). Transformational leadership in health care today. The Health Care Manager, 39(3), 117-121. Web.