The management pill

Gauri Chhabra

The Obama Care initiative marks a watershed for the Health Care and Hospital industry in the US. It also has a ripple effect on medicare and wellness in India. The most seismic shift, however, is the move away from the fee-for-service model. Medical establishments such as hospitals, clinics, rehabilitation centers are not only being looked upon as hallmarks of hope but also as the providers of efficient service. With more and more people resorting to medi-claim, the expectations from the hospitals have increased manifold. This has increased the demand for Hospital Administrators.

Getting in

The main professional courses available in this field are Bachelor's in Hospital Management / Administration, Post Graduate Diploma in Hospital Management /Administration, Master of Hospital Administration, MBA in Hospital Administration and MD/M Phil in Hospital Administration. There are certificate and diploma courses as well in this field.

Eligibility: Bachelor's in Hospital Management /Administration (BHA) is a three-year course the eligibility for which is Plus II with Biology with a minimum of 50 per cent marks and the selection is through general entrance test, followed by a group discussion and/or personal interview. You can do post-graduate/diploma courses and an MBA in Hospital Management after graduation in any subject. But the eligibility criteria for PG courses may vary according to the course and the institute concerned.

Career pathways

You can find employment in large hospitals, clinics, international and national healthcare organisations and health insurance companies, college and universities nursing homes, mental health organisations, public health departments, rehabilitation centers, pharmaceuticals and hospital supply firms, medical software companies and hospital consulting firms. The MHA (Hospital) programme prepares you for leadership roles in planning, operational and project management of hospitals and in managing financial, material and human resources as well as planning and managing information systems. You may be an assistant hospital administrator or manage front office, public relations, finance, quality control etc. Experience in this field can also fetch you a C-level job.

You can work as hospital superintendents, dean or director of medical colleges,

medical directors, nursing directors and so on.

If you are a medical graduate, you can dovetail your discipline into technical aspects of hospital administration, whereas the other streams will make you fit into the operational, financial and human resources aspect of management.

Job Description:

• Hiring staff
• Coordinate business functions
• Dealing with doctors' requirements
• Looking after patients' well-being and medical care
• Managing patient records
• Managing hospitals' public relation activities such as marketing, community health projects and fund-raising activities.
• Strategising policies and procedures and ensuring that the rules are adhered to by the hospital staff.
• Coming up with short as well as long-term programmes for the growth and development of the hospitals' research departments.
• Overseeing daily hospital functions by managing financial operations and budgets.

Remuneration

The salary of an administrator working for a medium grade hospital is around Rs30,000 per month. The annual remuneration of an administrator in a super specialty 1000-bed hospital can easily go into lakhs of rupees. According to Dr. Lakhwinder P Singh, Director, IIHMR Delhi, “Students with a degree in this field can rest assured that they will get well-paying jobs. At the fresher level they can easily get between Rs30,000 and Rs50,000 at the government departments while in the private sector they can get salaries in Rs4 and Rs11 lakh range per annum in hospitals and those employed in the IT sector can get salaries that are at par with those being offered to other specialaists in these sectors”.

The road ahead

One sector that is recession proof and always on the rise is health and wellness. With the government making concerted efforts in providing health care in both rural and urban areas of the country the demand for quality hospital administrators and managers is going to increase over the next few years. So, gear up for being a part of this meteoric rise in money and medicine.

First person

} Managing a hospital is very challenging as you know you are dealing with human lives and every nano second is important. The job is 24x7 and sometimes we have to come during night also. There is always the need to take swift decisions and at times I have to take the responsibility of doing something even while subverting the normal process. However, my utmost satisfaction is when I see people smiling as they walk out of the hospital. Doctors save lives and we are the ones who actually are closest to the patients are more close toRs.

— Amit Kaushal, Hospital Administrator, Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurgaon

Institute watch

• Indian Institute of Health Management Research, Jaipur, Delhi, Bengaluru
• All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi
• Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai
• Armed Forces Medical College, Pune
• The Apollo Hospitals
• Symbiosis Centre of Health Care (SCHC), Pune
• Tamil Nadu Open University is offering a two-year distance learning MBA course in Hospital Administration.
• The Indian Society of Health Administrators (ISHA) offering a one-year distance learning programme in hospital administration and nursing administration.
• For institutes like the All India Institute for Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Armed Forces Medical College, Devi Ahalya Vishwavidyalaya, Symbiosis Centre of Health Care (SCHC) etc, the minimum qualification for PG courses is an MBBS.