Working in healthcare is not always about providing direct care to patients. In fact, understanding the business aspects of healthcare administration can help you take your career further and provide you with a wide range of benefits. Earning an EMHA degree is an ideal option for people who want to take their healthcare career in a different direction. When you have an EMHA, you can choose to take a n administration management role in healthcare.
The healthcare industry has a business-focused side that healthcare workers who are typically focused on providing care to patients may not always be familiar with. However, the business side of the healthcare industry is absolutely essential when it comes to how hospitals and other healthcare organisations and facilities operate. Careers that are involved with ensuring that the day-to-day operations of healthcare organisations and facilities run smoothly are essential for making sure that patients are able to access and receive the best quality healthcare services. Healthcare administration also plays an essential role in keeping organizations and facilities in good overall standing and continuing operations.
What Do Professionals with Healthcare EMHAs Do?
An online healthcare EMHA from uOttawa can help to prepare you for management and administration roles within the healthcare industry. Professionals with a healthcare EMHA manage hospital departments, entire hospitals, and other healthcare facilities such as doctor’s offices and rehabilitation centres. You will learn about data, healthcare technology, informatics, policy, finance, and more, all within a wider healthcare context.
A healthcare EMHA is designed to prepare professionals by giving them the opportunity to develop the skills that are necessary to be a strong leader within the healthcare industry. Professionals with an EMHA in healthcare understand all the many complexities involved with managing healthcare organisations and departments and have the skills needed to handle their role with confidence and efficiency.
Career Options for Healthcare EMHA
A healthcare EMHA is idea for healthcare professionals wishing to expand on their current knowledge and keep up with changes in the regulatory landscape. This is a great qualification for healthcare administrators, analysts, and people with a clinical background looking to move into healthcare administration.
When you earn an EMHA in healthcare, you will have the opportunity to take several career paths based on your interests and career goals. There is a wide range of career options to choose from including health administrator, clinical leader and more. Health administrators, also known as health services managers or hospital administrators, work in a role with a wide range of responsibilities including staying up to date on regulatory changes in healthcare, overseeing budgets and finances, and recruiting employees for either clinical or administrative positions.
Clinical leaders are typically healthcare professionals such as nurses and doctors who have gained a business education to become leaders in their organisation or facility. Along with providing patient care, these professionals are also equipped to handle the business side and often have responsibilities such as dealing with financial issues or planning operations. EMHA-educated healthcare consultants work in a role where they are responsible for the evaluation of healthcare facilities and organisations and recommend ways to optimise and improve day-to-day operations.
Why Get an EMHA If You Work in Healthcare?
If you are currently working as a healthcare professional, investing in a healthcare EMHA can provide you with a lot of important benefits to help enhance your career. The skills that you will learn while taking an EMHA program will help you take your career to the next level and expand your career opportunities. There are many benefits of getting an EMHA for healthcare workers.
When you earn an EMHA in healthcare, you will learn some important business skills. This qualification is ideal if you currently work in healthcare but would like to move into a leadership position within healthcare. Whereas a healthcare MBA teaches general business skills that are transferable to other sectors, a healthcare EMHA is more specific to healthcare.
Make a Positive Impact
Getting a healthcare EMHA can be an ideal way to make improvements and have a positive impact on your local community. People who work in healthcare administration may often get the opportunity to focus on making healthcare services more accessible to certain areas of the community. Through your position as a healthcare leader with this qualification, you may have the opportunity to improve the health and wellbeing of your community as a whole.
Improve Healthcare Systems
An EMHA in healthcare administration can help you land roles where you will have an important part to play when it comes to improving healthcare systems. As a manager or healthcare administrator, you will be in a decision-making position regarding healthcare systems. You may need to make policy decisions that improve the quality of healthcare at your organisation or facility, or decisions that will help it run more efficiently.
Develop In-Demand Leadership and Management Skills
EMHA programs including the healthcare EMHA program focus on teaching students to be more effective leaders, which involves learning about and developing better leadership and management skills. When you enrol on a healthcare EMHA program you will spend a lot of time focusing on developing the skills that you need to become a more effective leader in the healthcare industry including team building, decision making, problem solving, and communication skills, which can then be applied to your healthcare EMHA role to enjoy a more successful career.
Learn Healthcare’s Business Side
Getting an EMHA in healthcare will allow you to get an in-depth, solid understanding of the business side of the healthcare industry. This will allow you to take on more career opportunities in healthcare leadership, management and administration and give you a better understanding of why it is so important to ensure that healthcare operations remain running as efficiently as possible. When you are familiar with the business side of the healthcare industry, you will be able to play a part in keeping the healthcare organisation or facility running as smoothly as possible.
Bring a Patient Care Perspective
Another great reason to earn a healthcare EMHA if you are currently working as a healthcare professional is that you will be able to bring a different perspective to the business side of healthcare. Those who only have an understanding of the business side of healthcare may not always be able to completely understand how the decisions they make actually impact patient care. On the other hand, those who have worked in direct patient care roles in the past will often make more informed decisions since they will have experienced the impact of certain decisions and changes first-hand.
Emotionally Rewarding
Working in healthcare management, leadership, and administration with your healthcare EMHA can be just as emotionally rewarding as working in a healthcare professional role on the front line of healthcare. When you work in one of these roles, you will be able to go to work daily knowing that the decisions you make and the work that you do is having an impact on healthcare organisations, facilities, patient care and the communities, which will give you a sense of accomplishment and pride. If you are already working as a healthcare professional, getting an EMHA in healthcare allows you to get into roles where you can go above and beyond to further improve healthcare quality and access to patient services in your work.
Why Get Your EMHA in Healthcare Online?
If you are currently working in healthcare and want to get a healthcare EMHA to take on leadership and management roles within the healthcare industry and get more involved in the business side, you may be considering online learning. Online degree programs are becoming increasingly popular among professionals who want to improve their education and careers for any reason, as they offer a level of flexibility that is not found in traditional campus-based programs and allow students to often save a substantial amount of money by providing them with cheaper resources and allowing them to continue working full-time while studying. Some of the main reasons to consider getting a healthcare EMHA online include:
More Flexibility
If you are currently working as a healthcare professional and need to continue working your usual hours as you study for your EMHA, you are going to need a study option that is flexible enough to allow you to do this. Online EMHA programs are often the ideal choice as many are completely flexible and student-led, allowing you to decide the best time of day or days of the week to study based on your working hours and other commitments. When you get your healthcare EMHA online, you can base your study schedule on the rest of your life rather than the other way around.
Save Money
With the cost of getting a university education getting more and more expensive, it is no surprise that many postgraduate students who are interested in a career in healthcare management and administration are considering options that allow them to save money. Although there is not always much of a difference when it comes to the tuition fee costs for online and campus-based masters’ degree programs, students can still save money in many different ways including no commuting to classes and the fact that educational materials are often uploaded online which can save money on buying textbooks and other resources.
Program Choice
When you decide to study for your healthcare EMHA online, you will typically have a wider range of universities and programs to choose from compared to studying for a traditional campus-based course, especially if you are not in a position to relocate to study. By getting your master’s degree online, you can easily choose from universities that are physically located hundreds of miles away without any need to worry about how you are going to get there. Along with this, there are also several universities and colleges today that operate solely online, widening the range of options that you have available to you when it comes to getting your healthcare EMHA.
Networking Opportunities
While there will always be opportunities to network no matter how you decide to get your healthcare EMHA, getting this degree online can make it easier for you to expand your professional network further since you will be studying alongside people from different healthcare facilities. Since online learning is open to everybody and location is no longer a deciding factor in where people choose to study when they opt for distance learning, getting your healthcare EMHA online will give you the chance to meet and get to know people that you may have never crossed paths with otherwise. And networking as an online student is easier than you might think; most colleges and universities that offer online EMHA programs put a great deal of effort into improving networking opportunities for students with a wide range of virtual communication options to choose from such as chat rooms, video conferences, and social media.
Employer Funding
How you are going to pay for your online healthcare EMHA might be a major concern for you. Getting an EMHA might be worth it for the career opportunities and salary growth; however, it does not come cheap. The good news is that employers are always looking out for new, highly trained professionals to hire to manage the business side of healthcare. And when you decide to study online, your employer may be more willing to cover all or some of the cost of your degree as not only will it benefit them, but you will also be able to continue working for them as normal while studying thanks to the flexible nature of these programs. If your employer offers a funding program for employees who want to progress within their careers, it is always worth having a conversation with them about your plans to get a healthcare EMHA to see if there is any funding available to help you pay for it.
If you’re currently working in healthcare and want to make more of an impact on the quality of patient care and services, then it’s worth considering earning a healthcare EMHA to prepare you for leadership, management, and key decision-making roles where you can make a huge difference.
