7 Personality Traits of an Effective Healthcare Administrator

Healthcare administrators, sometimes referred to as health services managers or health care managers, oversee hospitals, clinics, health networks, and other institutions in the healthcare industry. Depending on the kind and scale of the organization, they are in charge of buildings, services, programs, employees, finances, relationships with other organizations, and other management duties.

Healthcare administrators and managers, unlike physicians, do not interact with patients daily. They are not directly responsible for patient care. Instead, they focus on healthcare management by setting policy, implementing necessary reforms, and leading our nation’s healthcare institutions in a way that benefits individual patients.

Being a healthcare administrator is a lot of responsibility and not a job for everyone. What kind of personality traits are necessary to be an effective health care administrator?

1. Ethical Judgment and Decision-Making

In healthcare, when they say the buck stops here, they are usually referring to a healthcare administrator. This means someone in this leadership role must advocate for patients and staff.

Ethical decision-making is necessary when a healthcare administrator must confront a conflict or uncertainty regarding opposing values, such as personal, organizational, professional, and societal values. Those participating in this process must examine ethical principles such as fairness, autonomy and professional and corporate norms and regulations.

Many factors have contributed to the growing concern in healthcare organizations about clinical, organizational, and societal ethical issues, such as equity and affordability, quality, value-based care, patient safety, disclosure of medical errors, allocation of limited resources, mergers and acquisitions, financial and other resource constraints, and advances in medical treatment that complicate informed decisions near the end of life.

Healthcare administrators must understand and solve the rising number of complicated ethical difficulties they face, and that requires a robust decision-making process able to take into account several perspectives.

Healthcare administrators must lead in a way that fosters an ethical culture, validates the organization’s vision and values, establishes expectations and accountability and models ethical behavior for their companies. They must see beyond their own beliefs and values to better understand other people’s perspectives.

2. Effective Communication Skills

Of course, good communication skills are necessary for most industries and people in administrative positions. Health administrators must know how to talk to people, get their message across, ask and answer questions and deal with everyday scenarios.

Healthcare administrators must be vocal and explicit in their expectations, whether they communicate by email, phone, or face-to-face. This means that administrators must be self-aware and mindful of what they say and how they say it.

Since they do serve as advocates for both patients and staff, they also need to be able to explain someone else’s perspective clearly and without bias or judgment.

Effective leadership requires the ability to do more than just issue orders. You must be able to persuade employees to implement change successfully. Good leaders acknowledge individual needs and objectives while fostering collaboration in all company sectors.

3. Organizational Skills

Even the healthcare administrator at a small facility like a clinic juggles many tasks at one time. To make that work, they must be able to organize and compartmentalize.

Healthcare administrators are in charge of coordinating health and medical services. This includes a wide range of responsibilities, such as arranging staff schedules, managing facility finances, budgeting, organizing medical data, and enhancing the efficiency and quality of health care. As a result, organizational abilities are critical if you want to pursue a successful job in health administration after receiving your degree.

A healthcare administrator must focus entirely on the task at hand regardless of what else may be going on at the time. They need to set personal and business goals and create an organizational path to meet each.

4. Ability to Lead

The leadership needs of a healthcare administrator are extensive. A healthcare administrator can inspire staff to follow them by exemplifying the values and behaviors that can create a healthy work environment and assist a company in reaching its goals. Honesty, ethics, showing and providing respect, confidence, and being team players while making fair judgments for the welfare of the business and the community are all attributes that will lead a healthcare organization to success.

Whatever the company or position, the focus in healthcare is on the positive adoption of practices that lead to the greatest possible patient care and effective delivery of that care. When faced with situations that need ethical decisions, mutual respect and trust, workers are more inclined to follow the lead of an administrator dealing with the problem.

Healthcare administrators may build a shared vision and inspire staff success via leadership. Communication is one of the essential talents in this area of leadership skills, and it includes interpersonal, verbal and written communication abilities.

5. Analytical and Logical Skills

Ultimately, a healthcare administrator is a problem-solver, which requires critical thinking skills. They must maintain their facilities in accordance with the most current healthcare rules imposed at the municipal, state and federal levels. Despite nursing shortages, staffing issues and low employee morale, they find ways to staff their healthcare facilities. Above all, healthcare managers must be skilled problem solvers who can think clearly and critically.

6. Passion

Healthcare administrators have to be passionate about both their jobs and their people. They work daily with people under stress.

Healthcare administrators should be driven by a desire to improve efficiency and provide the best possible care to patients. Their job will directly influence who may be treated, how fast they can be treated, and how successful their result is once treatment is completed.

It takes passion to turn a healthcare facility into a cohesive organization. That passion will motivate others to meet the goals of the department or facility.

Often healthcare administrators serve as mentors, too. Motivating and leading frequently includes informal coaching that incorporates positive and constructive criticism to create confidence and trust. Having passion in your work will reflect positively on those around you.

7. Flexible

Healthcare administrators partake in a variety of tasks and must be adaptable enough to take on new ones as they advance in their careers. The employment duties may also be influenced by the location and size of the healthcare facility.

Some healthcare administrators oversee an entire facility, while others concentrate on a specific department within a facility. Wherever the healthcare administrator works, they must be familiar with state and federal legislation and ensure that HIPAA regulations are followed within their area of duty and competence.

Start Your Journey Today

If it sounds like a healthcare administrator might be the right role for you, get your career started with the right education. Bryant & Stratton College’s bachelor’s degree program in health services administration provides students with a solid foundation in health-related knowledge and concepts, as well as the administration of health services and facilities, with a focus on finance, legal aspects of healthcare, disaster planning and management and information systems.

Find out more online or by contacting us for information.