Medical Care Administration in the United States: Personnel Needs and Goals

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Medical care administration is a professional discipline in its own right, not an offshoot of clinical medicine or business administration. It requires extensive training in fundamentals of the biological and medical sciences, social medicine, the social sciences, and the tools of administration. Organizations sponsoring medical care programs include governmental agencies, voluntary health agencies, general organizations with health functions, and hospital-related agencies. About 150 types of position are available in the U.S., probably aggregating 5000 posts, excluding administrators of general hospitals. The backgrounds of medical care administrators are varied, and few include formal training in medical care administration. Among 73 hospitalization insurance plan administrators, only 2 had graduate training in the health field. Universities are not training enough students for medical care administration, and hiring agencies are often not aware of the qualifications needed. The heterogeneity of jobs has made it difficult for universities to formulate effective courses of training. Both schools of public health and courses of hospital administration, however, should give increased attention to this field, and agencies should upgrade their employment standards. Proper training for responsible positions in medical care administration would require 3 or 4 years of graduate work. This would be more effective than the usual one-year master''s training, yet far less wasteful of economic resources than the present practice of superimposing further postgraduate study and field experience on physicians.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: