HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL

Role of Healthcare Professional as a Manager

Abstract

In this study we try to explore the role of Healthcare Professional in a holistic context. The main focus of the research is on role of Healthcare Professional as a manager. The research also analyzes many aspects of Healthcare Professional and tries to gauge its effect on management.

Table of Contents

Abstract2

Introduction4

Role of Healthcare Professional as Manager5

Career for a Healthcare Professional9

Conclusion11

References12

Role of Healthcare Professional as a Manager

Introduction

Management in health care presents opportunity for unique challenge and self-fulfillment. It also calls on deep personal strength, values, and vision. In addressing health care managers, we are reminded of the clear differences among them: Some lead academic medical centers, others are responsible for health systems comprising multiple hospitals, and still others work in long-term care services, rehabilitation and specialty hospitals, hospice care, outpatient and ambulatory care, teaching and research institutions, managed care organizations, and other divergent organizations—all of them participants within a continuum of care. In some cases, hospitals stand alone as the sole provider in their communities, smaller in size, more narrow in scope of services, and limited to the primary and secondary care services that are within their range of technology and practitioner skill. Still others are of moderate size and scope. In each case, management is faced with similar challenges related to changing reimbursement systems, clinician workforce shortages, new technologies, and waves of patients unable to pay for their services.

Hospitals daily face competitive environments in which not only other hospitals but also their own medical staff providers often pursue competitive interests (e.g., in building their own surgery centers and thereby pulling market share from the hospital). As professionals, health care managers are going to find themselves faced with even more competition in the years ahead. They work in a world in which the tax exemption that favors them brings with it the cost of providing community benefits to the poor and needy in the community—and increasing pressure from community managers to do so. They face increasing shortages of key personnel and growing demands among a public that is reaching deeper into its pocket to pay for medical care and correspondingly bringing higher expectations to the care setting.

While leading in the turbulent times of the last decade, and facing a new decade of even more intense environmental pressures, hospital managers are compelled to bring a strong sense of values and vision to their practice. This chapter will address some of the issues and promises that are the environment in which the health care manager functions—at whatever level of responsibility that manager is found in the hospital.

Gail Warden, former CEO of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, summarized the role of the health care manager in three essential contexts: Hospitals have a strong community service mission, and they must

exert management in carrying out this mission;

ensure that there are mechanisms to promote the provisions of high quality services and compassionate care; and

Use systematic processes for determining goals and objectives in relation to change in the environment and the ...