Graduate healthcare management degrees

The ever increasing complexity and size of the healthcare system means that most of those entering the career now have graduate healthcare management degrees.

As the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us it is possible to enter the field with only a Bachelor's degree but this does limit your choices severely. What you'll find is that only the small facilities will even think of hiring you and either promotion or moving to a larger facility will only happen when you pass one or more graduate healthcare management degrees.

The entire system for training healthcare managers is split into two, with different schools and degrees providing each half.

A split profession

While almost all, and certainly all senior, health administrators have graduate healthcare management degrees the two different streams start from very different places. The general administrators will probably have done healthcare management as their original degree and then topped it up with further, possibly Master's or Doctorate, graduate healthcare management degrees.

The clinical administrators, those responsible for a medical specialty, will have had their original training in that specialty. They might have a medical degree, or have attended a vocational school or perhaps a nursing school for that training.

But whether they have been through a technical school or a degree program first, to become an administrator they will have gained one of the graduate healthcare management degrees.

What are the prospects?

Whichever path you take healthcare management is a rewarding career: the average pay is $67,000 while some clinical administrators make substantially more, $113,000 for the pharmacists for example.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.