HEALTHCARE ADMINISTRATION

Healthcare Administration

Healthcare Administration

Introduction

Hospitals may be structured as Nonprofit or profit oriented organizations. As with other Nonprofits, this organization structure brings with it the opportunity for tax exemption and the responsibility to provide community benefit. Recent controversies in the hospital sector have questioned whether the performance of hospitals does have any relation with the management or administration. In this paper, we will discuss the importance of management in hospitals, and people responsible for managing health care affairs.

Discussion & Analysis

During the latter half of the 20th century, as the management of health care institutions taken over by skilled managers, physicians transferred to their preferred world in the clinic, and the numbers of them in management roles decreased. However, this trend has been changing substantially in the last decade. Hospitals, needing to form relationships that are more positive with their physicians, have created and expanded the management roles of physicians. Positions have been created for the chief medical officer, vice president of medical affairs, chief medical information officer, and chiefs of various clinical operations and quality. Physicians also continue to move into the office of the chief executive officer and the boardroom (Petasnick, 2007).

Hospitals' relationships with their medical staffs have been characterized by the need to collaborate based on their interdependence and by conflict arising out of the different perspective each brings to its role in the hospital. Most physicians work in hospitals, not as employees, but as members of the medical staff of the hospital. The medical staffs are an organizational structure separate from the hospital's operations and management; it is organized under the authority of the governing board of the hospital and serves as the vehicle through which physicians are credentialled to work in the hospital—admitting, diagnosing, and treating patients there (Lantz, 2008).

The hospital cannot earn revenue from its clinical services ...