Healthcare Management - A Career in Healthcare Without a Medical Degree

Healthcare is an expanding industry. The need for qualified doctors and medical staff in hospitals will continue to increase as will the need for skilled managers to run them.
Hospital managers or healthcare administrators plan, coordinate and manage the business related activities within a hospital or medical practice and ensure proper delivery of services. This includes activities such as creating and supervising work schedules and managing finances. Individuals that choose this career path usually have sympathetic personalities and genuinely want to help others. They also need to display good interpersonal skills and leadership ability as directing and motivating others forms a key part of the position.
On an academic level, entry into this field requires at least a bachelor's degree and most healthcare management professionals hold a master's degree in health administration, health sciences or business administration. Graduates generally begin their careers as administrative assistants and move on to become managers, administrators or department heads once they've gained some experience.

6 Common Misconceptions About The Advanced Healthcare Directive

You may have heard a lot about the importance of creating an advanced healthcare directive whether in the form of instructions or appointing a person, so that the desired line of treatment can be followed if you are not in a position to take your own decisions at a future date. However there are a number of misconceptions surrounding this concept which can put doubts in your mind.

The following will address some of the more common myths about an advanced healthcare directive.

Myth 1 - Only older people need to make an advanced directive

Illness and accidents can happen to anyone old or young; in fact the advances in the medical field may end up keeping a younger person alive for years without any improvement. Ideally any individual above the age of 18 must make a directive or appoint an agent.

Myth 2 - A directive is meant to stop treatment

The Survival of Physicians

On January 6, 2012 the CNN website posted an article titled "Doctors Going Broke". It described several cases of independent physicians who are near bankruptcy although they once were quite well off. For instance, the article detailed the case of Dr. William Pentz, a cardiologist in a small group practice, who had to borrow money last month to make payroll. He and the other cardiologists have cut their salaries in order to meet overhead. Dr. Pentz ascribed the budget problems of the practice to the 35% to 40% cut in Medicare reimbursements for certain tests, such as stress tests. The practice overall saw a 9% decline in income compared to 2010. The article did say that there is a worrisome rise in the number of physicians experiencing financial difficulties. Although some point to new regulations and declining enrollment as the source of the troubles some financial experts point out that the problems may be due to the lack of business acumen of physicians and their staff.

A day after this report the Wall Street Journal posted an article about the bankruptcy and decline of several large corporations, including Kodak and Barnes & Noble. It compared these organizations to successful ones such as IBM and Johnson and Johnson. Briefly, it emphasized that the successful organizations were willing to take some risks on future developments and invest some of their capital into these risks. Not all such investments were successful but enough were to insure the success of the business.

With a bit of insight and some reasoning skills I believe I see in these patterns similarities to Darwin's theory on the survival of the species. Businesses and physician practices that adapt to their changing environments succeed where others languish or subside or sell their practices to hospital groups or insurers.

Locating Good Sources for Hospital Medical Supplies and Medical Equipment

Hospitals have a obligation to give their patients quality healthcare. This means not only providing excellent service from doctors, nurses and staff members, but also to make certain the medical equipment used is up-to-date and fully operational. Locating sources of medical supplies is one of the most important functions of a hospital's administrators.

A good place to start the search for medical supplies is by contacting the purchasing managers of other medical centers. These people have experience in obtaining medical equipment for their institutions and can usually offer sound advice on what manufactures and distributors offer quality supplies at reasonable prices. You can simply call the hospitals in your area and tell them your looking to locate a new supplier.

An even easier way to find suppliers is to go online and perform a web search. Just type in "medical supplies" into the search box of your search engine and visit the various websites of the distributors. Virtually all of the major hospital supply companies have websites that showcase the types of products they sell. These websites will also provide contact numbers so that you can contact them directly to ask for more details, such as whether the distributor rents hospital equipment in addition to selling it, and also for pricing information.

If you are looking for a supplier who focuses on a particular need, such as acute care, for instance, you can type this phrase into the search box and discover companies that specialize in a particular field.

Healthcare Translations

The scenario goes like this:

Mrs. Williams does not speak much English because she is new to your country. She takes the pamphlet you gave her for instructions for her new medicine, medical treatment, or daily life changes. The insert that comes with the medicine is not in Mrs. Williams's native language. She does the best she can to understand but in the long run Mrs. Williams does herself harm because she did not understand that particulars of her new drugs.

Her baby also received shots that day and she is handed another pamphlet on what side effects may occur. Some side effects are mild while others are life threatening. Because she cannot understand the pamphlet, her child is at risk.

Who is responsible for translating this information?

All of us at one time or another find ourselves using a variety of doctor specialties. This could be medial doctors, eye doctors, heart surgeons, or even chiropractors. We ingest drugs manufactured in countries from around the world.