The COVID-19 pandemic was only another entree in healthcare professionals’ bucket list of challenges during their careers. Their life wasn’t a bed of roses before the pandemic broke in. Healthcare degrees prepare you for all the challenges you’ll face during the patient’s diagnosis, treatment, and after-care. What these degrees don’t prepare you for is the administrative side of the hospital. Because you don’t have the necessary skill set for administrative chores, you’ll spend nearly a third of your professional life perplexed.
The healthcare industry has always been a huge business. However, it was always seen as a heavenly institute that takes in sick, devastated people and sends them back happier and healthier. What people choose to ignore is that hospitals are making a lot of money for treating you. They aren’t on God’s mission to heal people. Like any other profession, healthcare professionals are printing banknotes for their job. Therefore, the focus today is profitability and rising costs of medical and pharmaceutical supplies. But what knowledge of finance and management does an average healthcare professional have?
An MBA in healthcare aims to offer all the necessary skills and insights about business to healthcare professionals. It prepares you for administrative tasks, hospital management, running your clinic, and many other prospects in the field of healthcare. An advanced qualification only opens new doors for opportunities. It doesn’t take anything but a minimal cost and a few hours per week of your time. If you want to save some extra time and money, consider enrolling in an online healthcare mba. It’s highly essential and relevant in today’s digitally fast-paced world. But first, continue reading to know how it helps.
Starting Your Practice
The majority of workers in the healthcare industry intend to open a medical practice at some point. It’s more profitable, and you get to be your boss. However, a person exposed to only medical concepts and terminologies will have difficulty learning how a business works, especially as complicated as a clinic. Your patients are your customers. A healthcare environment is no place to promote the “The customer is always right” slogan. In this case, the customer’s beliefs and opinions can cost them their life.
On the contrary, they should get treated as clients and given as much value as possible. An MBA degree will help you communicate better with your customers and establish compliance requirements for your staff to follow. Lastly, financial regulation and bookkeeping can get very complicated for someone with no business experience.
Hands-On Experience In Administrative Skills
Nearly one-third of healthcare professionals are busy doing administrative tasks. If you end up in a leadership role, you’ll be evaluating your staff’s work through night shifts too. Policymaking, setting healthcare service prices, assisting in training and development, forming community partnerships, volunteering in fundraising activities, communicating with patients and vendors, keeping track of drugs and medical supplies, counseling, and other administrative jobs are just a few examples. These exercises will not require any of your pharmacology or epidemiology education. Therefore, an MBA degree can help you save a lot of time.
The time you spend learning these skills with the added anxiety can be spent flawlessly nailing these tasks and gaining recognition. Evidence proves that doctors who spent more time on administrative tasks were less satisfied with their careers. Of course, it’s understandable since this kind of work is rarely stated in the JDs, and it’s not even taught in the traditional medical institutes. For now, until the course curriculum for medical degrees expands, an MBA degree can be your light at the end of the tunnel.
Acquaintance With Technology
As mentioned earlier, we are living in a digitally fast-paced world now. Almost the entire course curriculum of healthcare degrees is either theoretical or clinically practical. It leaves little to no space to feed you with technology-related knowledge that is important in today’s hospital settings. Know-how of advanced technical systems is a must in all healthcare careers. During the first week, you can either learn technical skills beforehand or cry about them in the bathroom at your new job. Thankfully, knowledge of technology and software is an essential part of business degrees, especially MBAs. An MBA in healthcare follows the same code and can teach you all the necessary technical skills. Thankfully, knowledge of technology and software is an essential part of business degrees, especially MBAs. An MBA in healthcare follows the same code and can teach you all the necessary technical skills.
Enhanced Communication
Interaction with patients is an essential element of any healthcare career. You can’t entice the consumer back with a discount or a free meal. You could put someone’s life in jeopardy or face a lawsuit. Moreover, you don’t need to be overly professional while interacting with patients. To acquire their trust, you must be attentive and compassionate. The relationship of trust makes diagnosis and treatment easier for both the patient and the doctor.
While verbal communication is an essential skill for healthcare professionals, it shouldn’t be limited to just that. Many doctors and nurses are considering getting their research work published. It needs to go through several mediums to ensure whether it’s readable and understandable. MBA degrees also offer assistance in that area.
Increase Earning Potential
Most healthcare professionals, at some point in their career, undergo career stagnation. It makes them less productive and far less motivated to pursue their jobs. The consistently depreciating salaries are a solid reason why healthcare professionals are looking forward to MBA degrees. As per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, healthcare administrators earn over $100,000 annually. Not only do MBA degrees promise you better salaries, but they also offer better job prospects. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also states that most MBA students tend to earn a bigger annual pay than the cost of their entire MBA degree.
The Bottom Line
Healthcare careers are terrifying if you don’t possess the relevant skillset. A communication gap with the patients or vendors can delay diagnosis and treatments, all of which can result in life-endangering consequences. Suppose you look forward to starting your practice. In such a situation, you’ll face a slew of non-medical and pro-business difficulties that your bachelor’s degree didn’t prepare you for. An MBA degree is the solution to all such problems. It can also potentially increase your salary and future job prospects.