Help me find a career!

October 1, 2008 8:40 AM

Careerfilter: Tell me all about going into healthcare administration...

I'm 24. Graduated with a BS in Biochemistry. Have taken about 2 years off after graduation. During that time, I have figured out what I don't want to do. Now, I'm thinking of going into healthcare administration. So I have a few questions regarding this:

1. What is it like? What are some of the challenges and rewards? What's an average workday like?

2. I have to get a degree right? What should I get a degree in? Which schools do you recommend?

If you can't answer these questions, can you point out some resources to me?

Right now, I'm working at a job that's completely unrelated to my field of study, banking. But I like working with people and I would like to go into management. I really want to get started on my career now, if only I can figure out what that will be!

posted by state fxn to work & money (3 comments total)

I'm not in that particular field, so I can't tell you how necessary an advanced degree is, but if you choose to go that route you're looking at a MHA degree or MPH with a focus on adminsitration. Usually offered through a school of public health, you would take some classes with other public health students, learning biostats and epidemiology, and some policy and administration courses. It seems like your background in banking/finance would be an asset, combined with your undergrad science education.

Sorry, I know that only answers a small part of your question, but hopefully will give you some links and google-able terms.
posted by twoporedomain at 9:19 AM on October 1, 2008

Can you narrow down what you mean by "healthcare administration"? There's a lot of different jobs that could fall under that umbrella, and the sorts of degrees that might be useful will vary. In particular:

1. Public or private? Are you interested in working for the government (Medicaid, Medicare, state insurance programs, or city/county public health initiatives), or working for the private sector (health insurance company, hospital, clinic)?

2. Are you interested in the health part of health administration, or the administration part? If you've got a burning passion to help make people less-sick, then you might want to think about getting into public health; on the other hand, if you're more of a business-type person and the health care field strikes you as pretty stable place to work then you want to think more about business degrees, master in public administration, or maybe something like accounting. If you're more interested in advocacy-type work to help more people get access to health care, then that's a different path entirely; a masters in public policy will lead to jobs in advocacy organizations or nonprofits. The type of work and the pay in particular will vary quite a bit between these different types of jobs.

What the average workday looks like depends in large part on what you do. Administration is administration, in a sense; all the jobs I can think of under the umbrella of "health administration" are white-collar desk jobs that will involve some level of pushing paper. However, the point of pushing all that paper may differ--do you want to work for a health insurer, figuring out what sort of disease management program to implement, improving profits while also improving your customers' health? Do you want to work for the federal government, making projections about how many people will enter Medicare over the next 20 years and helping craft policy that will address that? Do you want to be working for a local community health center or FQHC, helping them balance their books and keep payroll going so that they can continue to serve the low-income uninsured population? Do you want to be working at an organization that comes up with legislative proposals to increase health care coverage of children, and petitions the government to introduce their bills?

I think if you include a bit more information about what attracts you to healthcare administration, and what you would LIKE to spend your days doing (or are good at), it might help people answer your question a bit better. Different degrees will get you to different places, so I think you need to have a better idea of what you want to do before anyone can help with suggesting schools.
posted by iminurmefi at 11:07 AM on October 1, 2008

One other thing to think about. When you say:

I like working with people and I would like to go into management.

it makes me think that you should do a *lot* of investigation into the career you want BEFORE you go get a degree. I work with people who have masters degrees in public policy or public administration, and I know at least one person who dropped $50K and two years on his degree only to figure out that he was a people person who couldn't stand being stuck in an office staring at spreadsheets all day, when he really wanted to be on the front lines actually interacting with people and delivering health care himself. He ended up back in school for his nursing degree; I think that if he had gotten a job at our company for a year or two before getting his masters, he might have avoided that expensive detour.
posted by iminurmefi at 11:42 AM on October 1, 2008