Healthcare administrators often make decisions that impact their patients and the operations of their facilities. From assessing budgets to scheduling staff, they must be able to handle a range of tasks.

This means they need to have strong leadership skills. If, for example, they need to cut costs by letting go of phlebotomists, they must find another way to save money without affecting patient care.

Excellent Communication Skills

Healthcare managers often communicate with many people — from nurses and doctors to patients and their families. They must explain complex medical issues in simple terms and build trust with their coworkers.

Strong written communication skills are also crucial in healthcare management, especially when writing medical records and reports. Clear, concise writing can prevent miscommunication and improve patient outcomes. 

Healthcare managers must be able to organize and implement systems within the organization to ensure the right staff members are working on suitable projects at the correct times. This requires monitoring and evaluating skills, which are leadership practices that help to align and mobilize staff.

Strong Organizational Skills

Whether keeping track of your tasks or assisting team members with theirs, strong organizational skills can make the difference between being a good healthcare manager and a great one. This soft skill involves breaking down larger goals into smaller, more manageable ones and establishing timelines and schedules for completion.

This is especially important for healthcare managers like Chris Manfuso, who often simultaneously have many projects and deadlines. Strong organizational skills allow them to keep their work and the work of their teams on target, avoid distractions, and remain focused. They also use their organizational skills when addressing issues that may arise in the workplace, such as when a physician claims workloads or an organization is overburdening them and is trying to cut costs by letting phlebotomists go.

Strong People Skills

While healthcare facilities may focus on treating patients, they’re also large businesses that run like any other. Successful healthcare administrators must combine their passion for helping people with a deep understanding of business and management skills.

Effective communication is a baseline skill that enables healthcare managers to share policies, procedures, and regulations with staff members. This helps ensure that everyone understands what’s expected of them and why.

It’s essential in clinical environments where workers may fear a loss of patient safety or a mistake that could lead to severe consequences. 

Strong Critical Thinking Skills

Strong critical thinking skills allow healthcare management executives to see problems from multiple angles. They can then develop innovative solutions to overcome any obstacles that may be standing in their way.

Critical thinkers are interested and want to know everything about a subject. They ask questions about why, what, who, where, and when in a situation, never taking anything at face value.

Critical thinkers also try to evaluate their assumptions and biases in a situation, looking for evidence that supports both sides of an argument. They communicate with their colleagues about their conclusions so that everyone is on the same page. This is especially important when dealing with change management in the healthcare industry, which often involves many different teams and stakeholders.

Strong Financial Skills

Healthcare facilities may be helping patients get better, but they run like any other business behind the scenes. That’s why successful healthcare management professionals must understand business processes strongly.

This could include anything from ensuring that billing department operations run smoothly to developing plans for implementing telehealth services. In addition, healthcare managers need to be comfortable diving deep into documentation and asking the right questions when issues arise. A good manager will also be able to accept when they might need some extra help, should something be beyond their skillset or simply take up too much of their time, and take the initiative to get in touch with someone to take the task off their hands. 

And, of course, because the healthcare industry is constantly evolving, healthcare administrators must stay up-to-date on regulatory and technology changes.