A hospital administrator divides time between planning and engaging with ongoing developments
Hospital administrators are in charge of managing hospitals, or in the case of large hospitals, specific departments. They run the day-to-day affairs of their area of responsibility and ensure that the operation is working efficiently and that the hospital's patients receive the care they need The work requires advance planning and the implementing of policies.
Hours
Since hospitals are open all day long, every day in a week, the hospital administrator may have to work at any time. In the same way as doctors, they are essentially on emergency call since problems can develop at any time. A decision may need making which cannot wait until the morning and so the administrator may have to turn up and resolve matters.
Communications
A constant activity for any hospital administrator is to deal with the ongoing stream of e-mails and other communications which need attending to. Every day, a hospital administrator receives some 150 to 200 e-mails which they will have to sort through, according to the blog of hospital administrator Todd C. Linden.
Incident Management
The hospital administrator has to keep an eye on the hospital as a whole, dealing quickly with anything that goes wrong. This could mean making sure that a faulty fire alarm system is fixed by engineers, or devising an action plan to control the correct allocation of hospital beds. As a result, on a day-to-day basis the administrator often makes tours of the hospital in order to respond to any developing issues, says Todd C.Linden in his blog.
Planning
An administrator's duties extend to assigning resources to each department, should she be in charge of a hospital as a whole, and implementing the policies different departments are set by the hospital's board of trustees. In practical terms, this requires the administrator to attend numerous meetings, at which he will discuss with other medical staff and departmental heads in order to construct effective plans to direct the hospital's performance. Areas in which an administrator may be involved include budgeting, patient services and quality assurance, according to the Princeton Review.
Networking
In addition to meeting with other staff at the hospital, an administrator's time may also be taken up while performing networking duties. These might include greeting visiting medical professionals or even attending charity functions and community health projects.
Unusual Occurrences
Though much of his day might be taken up by meetings and planning, the administrator is not limited to the boardroom. As part of his day, he might find himself becoming actively involved in developments, as administrator Todd C. Linden notes in his blog. For example, a large-scale emergency might cause a stream of incident victims to arrive in the accident ward and the administrator will help out medical staff in treating these patients.
Tags: hospital administrator, Todd Linden, administrator have, administrator Todd, administrator Todd Linden, hospital whole