Health Administration for More and Better General Health
Do you want to guarantee good management in a hospital or clinic but don’t know how? the Health Administration will be very useful to you.
The administration provides a large number of tools that will allow you to optimize the human, technical and financial resources in the health system.
More and more users demand better services and effectiveness, which translates into high costs for the health sector. Therefore, today I will explain about this type of administration that will help maximize benefits.
To make reading easier, I present the following points:
- Health Administration meaning?
- Goals of the Health Administration
- Functions of the Health Administration
- What profile does a health administrator have?
- Conclusions.
What is the Health Administration?
The demand for health services is growing, which makes us stop to think about whether we are really having the impact we want.
In this sense, the Health Administration was created to study this service as a system made up of resources in order to cover a need.
It is very common to observe doctors without any knowledge of the administrative process being as a director of a hospital, clinic, ambulatory among others. This is not recommended, due to the lack of preparation and experience to carry out organizational management.
The administration has been divided into application areas and today I will explain how it will help you optimize the benefits in the health field. But, what is the Health Administration?
It consists of applying the functions of planning, organizing, directing, and evaluating scarce resources in order to achieve well-being in the population that requires it.
This will allow the growth and efficient and effective development of institutions in the health area.
The raison d’être of health management is to achieve growth in quality and opportunity to do more and better health using the least amount of resources possible, for which the instruments and technologies of how to do it are available. Pastor Castell 2017
In essence, this administration will have public or private health centers as its field of application and will be carried out by professionals trained in the area.
Therefore, it is capable of responding to the new challenges of the health administration and the needs of the population.
Goals of the health administration
These are some of the objectives of the Health Administration.
Efficiency:
It consists of using the scarce resources that health centers have in the best possible way and without causing waste. Efficiency focuses on using the fewest resources possible to perform the functions.
In the health area, costs have been increasing and this has affected the financial situation of the organization considerably.
In this sense, the primary objective of management is to achieve a balance between the required resources, productivity and the quality of the service provided.
Effectiveness:
Consist in meeting the proposed objectives at the different levels of the health center. This type of administration will seek to maximize the benefits translated into a better quality of life for users.
Those objectives are complemented by important actions such as:
Improve the processes that are carried out at the different levels of health institutions, incorporating new technology and training all personnel.
The production of information necessary for decision-making at the different levels and which will also serve as the basis for preparing health plans.
The satisfaction of the population: Refers to ensure that the health service provided by the institution meets the expectations of the user and generate greater quality of life.
Functions of the Health Administration
Planning :
It consists of defining where you want to go, what you want to do and in what time. It is in this process when the objectives and the health plan to be executed are defined.
Organization :
It consists of distributing the functions, activities and resources to be used among the different levels of the health center to effectively fulfill the plan.
Control :
Supervise the distributed activities in order to detect weaknesses and solve them in time.
Evaluation :
It is in this function where the results obtained in the execution are compared with what is reflected in the plan. This information will serve to detect deficiencies in areas of the health center.
Characteristics of the profile of a health administrator
What profile does a health administrator have?
The health administrator is a professional with knowledge of the administrative process, social sensitivity and with a broad vision of the health system.
Competencies and skills are essential to achieve efficiency, effectiveness, growth and sustainability over time.
Administration in a health center cannot be done intuitively because in this sector legal and moral responsibility is high.
In this sense, there is a problem when determining the ideal person to fulfill this function.
On the one hand, a doctor does not have the competencies to develop the administrative process and therefore his management will not be effective.
On the other hand, an administrator has the preparation, but lacks the general vision of the health sector.
Hence the need to train the doctor in administrative processes. In this way it can be guaranteed that a quality service will be provided at a lower cost, effectively managing the resources of the health center.
If you are a doctor and want to specialize in the administrative area, in my article Are you interested in a Master of Business Administration? you will get information about it.
Below I describe several of the functions that an administrator must fulfill in this area.
- Manage administrative and financial processes in health institutions.
- Continuously improve processes, adapting them to user requirements.
- Formulate health plans taking into account the administrative process and the resources of the health institution.
- Implement quality systems to meet user expectations and lower costs.
Conclusions
Every time, people are more demanding with the services they receive and the health sector is no exception.
For this reason, the need arises to apply scientific and administrative methods in health institutions, in order to maximize benefits and meet expectations.
The Health Administration allows planning, organizing, directing and evaluating the resources found in medical centers, in order to meet the objectives.
This administration must be carried out by a professional in the area but with extensive knowledge in the field of health.
For this reason, it is recommended to train doctors in administrative processes and thus guarantee good resource management.
