June 12th, 2023
6 Reasons to Get a Healthcare Administration Degree
A healthcare administration degree doesn’t just open the door to rewarding career paths in the healthcare industry. You can also take your knowledge, skills, and experience into insurance, pharmaceuticals, government, and nonprofit organizations. You can do good work, making a difference, and earn well in a high demand field.
1. Gain Knowledge about Healthcare
As with any education you acquire, a degree in healthcare administration provides you with valuable knowledge. The focus on healthcare administration means you learn important concepts that might help your future self run a department or a facility. Courses in business, management, accounting, finance, ethics, and healthcare delivery systems and laws give you an important foundation and set you up for success in your career.
2. Find Rewarding Work in Healthcare Administration
With your healthcare administration degree, you can prepare for a career of service. Although you won’t provide direct patient care, you focus on ways to improve it. Within a healthcare organization, you can create guidelines for patient outcomes, collect and analyze data to track patients’ progress, advocate for patients when insurance won’t cover certain costs, and motivate your staff to improve the quality of the care they provide. Or maybe you can take your knowledge into public policy, helping to improve the overall healthcare system in the U.S. Or perhaps you’ll become a pharmaceutical administrator, working at a company trying to find the cure for cancer.
3. Healthcare Administrators Are in Demand
Demand for health administrators is expected to grow much faster than average through the decade, especially as the Baby Boomer population ages and requires more health services. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there’s an employment gap of more than 56,000 in healthcare administration. Your degree can help fill that gap and set you a path for a long and fulfilling career.
4. Earn a Good Salary as a Healthcare Administrator
Medical and health services managers earned a median salary of more than $100,000 in 2021, but the vertical you choose, the experience you bring to the job, and where you work, can all impact your salary. For example, healthcare administrators who work in hospitals earned a median salary of $119,450 while those who worked in nursing homes earned $83,550. And the median hospital administrator salary in the Boston area was nearly $300,000, while the median salary in Charleston, SC was $248,907.
5. You Can Find Work in Many Healthcare Settings
Administrators are needed in all kinds of facilities including hospitals, long-term care facilities, outpatient care centers, and physician’s offices. But you may also work for insurance companies that rely on administrators with a deep understanding of the U.S. healthcare system. And public health administrations in state and federal governments need knowledgeable and passionate leaders who can make a difference.
6. You Can Specialize in Healthcare
Just as doctors can specialize in a specific area of medicine, you can also specialize in a particular area of healthcare administration. For example, if you have an interest in budget and finance, you could become a financial specialist or account manager. You could also oversee operations of a unit as a clinical manager, or you could handle the hiring and recruitment of doctors, nurses, and staff as an HR associate. There are many different career paths you can pursue once you earn a healthcare administration degree.
Limestone University offers a Bachelor of Science in Healthcare Administration that can prepare you for rewarding work in the healthcare industry. Our program is offered online for flexibility and will introduce you to all aspects of healthcare administration including policy, finance, law, and economics. Click the button to learn more.
Bachelor of Science (B.S.)
The Limestone Health Care Administration program prepares those pursuing a career in administrative positions in the health care industry. This program is ideal for students interested in management and administration, as well as contributing to the well-being of others.
