A nursing home administrator is the manager of a health care facility of institution. His main job is to oversee that the health care facility is working smoothly and efficiently. Also, he is the one who makes sure that employees are doing their job well and in good nature, and all the equipment and health care facilities are in good condition, and the over-all management and health care facility is running and functioning just right. In general, managing the operations is the main responsibility of nursing home administrators. The administrative work requires someone who is capable of handling these obligations and does the jobs meticulously and with full responsibility. However, it is not just the managerial tasks that the nursing home administrator must be aware of. One should also have an idea of the activities associated with nursing and health care.
What are the Qualifications?
A nursing home administrator is a person who has a good knowledge of medical field as well as the ability to manage business operations. In this kind of job, one has to interact with doctors, nurses and relatives of patients. Hence, one has to be skilled and have effective communication skills for working efficiently.
Moreover, being an administrator needs to have the know-how of handling technology use in health care and administrative tasks. The administrative work also involves management of the tasks assigned to different departments and units.
Some of the basic and helpful qualities these professionals should possess are the presence of mind and the ability to take quick decision. At the same time, administrators should always be ready to confront inspection conducted by state inspectors.
Some nursing home facilities specialize in certain areas like in serving patients with certain specific medical conditions. For instance, one nursing home facilities provide service only to cancer patients. With this type of specialized facility, the administrators have to do specialized work related to a certain medical condition.
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Like any other profession in medicine, prior experience is considered an added advantage for working in this field.
What are the Requirements?
In this profession, a four year bachelor’s degree in Health Care Administration is required to work as a nursing home administrator. Subjects taught in this program include health care economics, principles of marketing, gerontology, aging & long-term care and other important courses related to health care. On the other hand, smaller nursing home facilities may sometimes allow candidates with associate degrees to work as administrators. But for someone who wants to grow professionally in this career, a master’s degree in business administration along with some experience will certainly prove to be useful. In order to work as a nursing home administrator, a License of Nursing Home administrator (LNHA) is required.
Nursing administrators have to have skills as well; this profession requires them to be responsible for smooth running of different operations. Since they have to handle important tasks with great responsibility, they are also rewarded with a good pay salary ($70,000 – $80,000 annually). Of course, qualification of these professional is given preference in determining the salary.
