Second Career Secrets #5: Hospital Administrator

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(For an introduction to Careers in Profile, read more here. To learn about other jobs that have been profiled, check out the list.)
1. My name is: Jennifer C.

2. I am a/an: Hospital Administrator

I currently work for HCA (www.hcahealthcare.com). HCA is one of the largest for-profit hospital management companies in the country.

3. Most people in this job have: A graduate degree in business administration (MBA) or in health administration (MHA)

I attended Virginia Commonwealth University (www.had.vcu.edu), which is currently ranked # 4 in Health Administration according to the US News and World Report.

4. I think the three most useful personal skills I bring to this job that help me do it are:

1) Business skills (Healthcare is a business – you have to make money in order to buy the latest medical technology and employ the most talented physicians and other healthcare professionals.)

2) People skills, and

3) Communication skills (Depending on size, a hospital may employ several hundred to several thousand people. These folks, which include everyone from housekeepers to cafeteria staff to nurses and physicians, are diverse in skill set, educational level, etc. A hospital administrator must have the people and communication skills necessary to manage each group and to lead everyone towards one common goal – providing excellent patient care.)

5. Please rate your income level in this job when you first started in this profession (pick one):

a) still living with mom and dad and can’t pay rent
b) living with mom and dad but paying rent
c) sharing a one-bedroom apartment with four other people
d) sharing a two-bedroom apartment with only one other person
e) renting my own apartment
f) scraped together a down payment and bought a starter starter house
g) renting a bigger house than I could buy
h) own a home with lots of closet space (or I could, if I didn’t live in this ridiculously overpriced city)
i) own my ideal home (even my pets have their own bedrooms)

6. Please rate your income on the same sophisticated scale after:

-five years in your profession: h) own a home with lots of closet space (or I could, if I didn’t live in this ridiculously overpriced city)

-ten years in your profession: i) own my ideal home (even my pets have their own bedrooms)

7. Please indicate how much of your job involves grunt work and how much involves substantive work. Grunt work here is defined as things you are being seriously overpaid to do. Substantive work is defined as work you were really hired to do that involves thinking and (usually) writing of some kind.

any average day = 10% grunt work and 90% substantive work

8. Does the grunt work/substantive work ratio increase over time in the career? decrease? stay the same? Yes, there is a definite decrease in grunt work over time in the career. In the beginning of my career, an average day would have consisted of 30% grunt work and 70% substantive work. Hospitals are multi-million dollar businesses, and as such substantive work is only given once you have proven yourself.

9. Do you know of instances of people starting this career as a second career? How did it go? Yes, it is possible to start a career in hospital administration as a second career. This is actually common in people who have worked in other areas of the healthcare industry, such as the pharmaceutical or insurance industry. To be successful in this career, particularly as a second career, one must have a strong knowledge of the healthcare industry and a strong background in business.

10. If you had it to do all over again, what would you do differently? Would you start in a different sub-field? Get a different undergraduate degree? I would not do anything differently, but perhaps take more business courses in my undergraduate education. My undergraduate degree is in Psychology from the University of Virginia, and while that made the coursework for my graduate degree a little more challenging, now that I am in the field I can honestly say sometimes I have to rely more on my psychology degree than on my business degree. Hospital management involves a lot of people management.

11. What demand will their be for your profession in ten years? There will be a big demand for my profession in the future given the aging of the baby boomer population. This demand will not just be for hospital administrators but also for administrators of nursing homes, long-term care facilities and rehabilitation facilities.

12. Is there a clear hierarchy in your job or can people strike out on their own and expand/rise quickly? Yes, there is a clear hierarchy in the world of hospital administration. Beginning with staff employees, they report to managers, who report to directors, who in turn report to administrators. Depending on the size of the hospital, there will typically be 4-10 administrators (Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Nursing Officer, Ethics and Compliance Officer, etc). All of the administrators report to the Chief Executive Officer.

13. How quickly do you assume large managerial duties in your job, if at all? Do you like this/not like it? How quickly one assumes large managerial duties depends what type of prior work experience one has in addition to their graduate degree. However, one would not automatically jump into an administration role upon graduating with an MBA or MHA. Typically, the new graduate will work as a manager and then director for a several years in the field or department of their expertise (Patient Relations, Fiscal, etc) before assuming a hospital administration position. And yes, I like this responsibility. Anyone who does not like managerial duties should reconsider hospital administration as a career choice.
14. Do you have to work for a large company is your profession? Can you work for smaller or medium-sized firms? Can you start your own? While there are some stand-alone hospitals mainly in small and rural cities, most hospitals are a part of a company that owns a large network of hospitals. However some hospital administrators who prefer to work in a smaller setting are employed as administrators of community health clinics or physician practices.

15. What are the work hours – really? If they are seasonal or if they change over the course of the career, please explain that too. The work hours are long, 10 to 12 hour days are not unusual. Late evening dinner meetings and community events are also the norm. Additionally, hospital administrators are on-call to handle any emergency in the hospital. Typically this weekly call coverage is rotated among all the hospital administrators, so each administrator has one week of call coverage every few weeks.

16. What else do you want to tell people about this profession? In any given city there are only a handful of hospitals, and in each hospital there are only a handful of administrators. Therefore, to advance in this field one must be willing to relocate in order to take advantage of career opportunities. Competition is very keen for the handful of open administrator positions available. However despite the intensely competitive field and the long hours, a career in hospital administration is very rewarding.
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Many, many thanks to Jennifer for volunteering to be in the Careers in Profile series. If you would like to be interviewed for Careers in Profile, let me know! Or, you can go ahead and fill out your answers to the questions and email them to me at taichinh at mac dot com or drop them in the comments.