The fundamental role of healthcare administration is to coordinate healthcare operations and address patient needs. However, dedicated administrators are always searching for better ways to define and achieve public health goals.  

If you’re interested in taking on a role in the future of healthcare administration, here’s an overview of what it is, the core principles of effective administrators, and how you can take healthcare administration to the next level at your organization. 

What Is Healthcare Administration?   

Healthcare administration is the managerial framework that allows a healthcare organization to provide quality medical services. This results in two facets of healthcare management according to Marc Meyer, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim College of Business and Faculty Director of the program.  

“One side is the clinical side, which is taking care of patients,” Meyer says. “The other side is the hotel side of the business that deals with patients before they arrive, when they are admitted as a patient, and after they are discharged.” 

According to Meyer, each stage needs accuracy, integration, and specific patient centricity. Since hospitals admit thousands of patients every day, high-volume operations with careful, computer-supported administration is essential to maintaining quality of care as well as a positive patient experience. 

In most cases this means managing staff, processes, resources, and policies to ensure patients receive optimal care. However, healthcare doesn’t end with a hospital stay or doctor’s visit. In fact, there’s a growing trend in additional healthcare support when patients go home to recover.  

For example, the pandemic further accelerated the need for at-home support, requiring administrators to become skilled at coordinating remote services.

“Even though COVID has dissipated quite a bit in terms of emergencies and tying up hospital beds, the home is still seen as a place to provide recovery,” Meyer adds. “And patients feel better, and even recover faster, at home.” 

So if you’re considering a career in healthcare administration, it’s crucial to understand that the field is evolving into a combination of operations, management, innovation, and science-based clinical care. Here are five core principles of healthcare administration that can help you better address the changing needs of patients.  

5 Core Principles of Healthcare Administration  

1. Value-Based Care

In response to trends like inflation, value-based care models are becoming an important aspect of effective healthcare administration. This prioritizes the health outcomes of patients, rather than high-cost services from providers.  

Traditionally, healthcare in the U.S. has incentivized healthcare facilities to provide a higher volume of services or recommend more expensive procedures—even if those services don’t lead to better results for the patient. This isn’t surprising considering the U.S. ranks poorly in health equity and access—despite its level of spending. 

In a value-based care model, the payment to healthcare providers partially depends on the quality of care. Healthcare providers can even face penalties for delivering inadequate care or earn more incentives by improving patient outcomes.  

“Those outcomes are measured in highly specific, non-trivial ways,” Meyer says.  

According to Meyer, some examples of metrics include:  

• Length of a patient’s stay in the hospital 
• Unnecessary time waiting for hospital discharge 
• Rate of readmissions within thirty days of hospital discharge
• Location of healthcare provider 
• Diseases and co-morbidities from episode of care 

“Measurement is a complex matter and can only be done well with a holistic perspective on quality and efficiency,” Meyer adds.   

From a financial standpoint, moving to value-based care challenges healthcare administrators to redefine their success metrics. For example, value-based care emphasizes safety and health equity for patients, but administrators also need to encourage cost-efficiency to meet a facility’s bottom line. This is where learning about value-based care can help administrators navigate these changing metics.  

Northeastern’s MS in Management: Healthcare Administration has courses specifically dedicated to this holistic measurement approach, as well as designing and administering value-based care incentive structures.

2. Ethical Standards      

To provide quality care, healthcare facilities must put patients’ best interests first. However, healthcare managers and administrators have the difficult task of navigating the ethical concerns surrounding health, industry regulations, and patient rights. 

Patients are often in a vulnerable position physically and mentally—whether they’re dealing with routine procedures or end-of-life care. They need advocates who can provide well-informed recommendations and support their health privacy, rights, and preferences.  

Technology is making it even more important for healthcare providers to have a strong understanding of clinical ethics. With digital health data, medical providers are better at identifying public health trends, but become more vulnerable to security breaches.  

As healthcare organizations find new ways to adopt technology, administrators will have to figure out how to serve patients while protecting their overall wellbeing. One of the best ways to do this is through a structured program like the one offered at Northeastern that offers a medical ethics course that helps students effectively consider the ethical issues that arise in the clinical and administrative processes around patient care.  

3. Data-Driven Decision-Making 

Data-driven decision-making is vital to the management of healthcare facilities. This is particularly the case when managing clinician shortages and medication supply chains, reaching underserved populations, and improving the quality and comprehensiveness of health information in computer systems. 

Taking data-driven decision-making also plays a huge role in remote care, which adds an additional level of complexity in terms of data quality, systems integration, and clinical workflows. 

“Administration in healthcare, by necessity, has become highly innovative,” Meyer says. “Administration is no longer static or boring.” 

For example, Meyer noted the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning streamlining administrative processes in ways that are going to be highly impactful in the years ahead.

“To take advantage of new decision-support technology, the underlying workflows of a clinical or administrative process often need to be redesigned,” Meyer adds. “Our students at Northeastern do this work in many of our classes, creating action plans for their own organizations.” 

However, the validity of data depends on how well healthcare organizations understand their communities and design effective solutions.  

“Generative AI poses all sorts of ethical considerations about how much we should let computers make important health decisions,” Meyer adds. “If the data underneath that decision model is biased, its utility is limited.”  

Faculty co-director of MS in Management: Healthcare Administration Dr. John Halamka, MD, is hyper focused on ensuring clinical AI serves all populations fairly in his coursework. As President of the Mayo Platform and one of the co-authors of the new Healthcare AI Policy, Halamka provides extensive industry expertise to students. 

4. Diversity and Inclusion 

Creating healthcare environments that reflect the diversity of the populations they serve plays a huge role in increasing health access and equity. 

“Rather than accepting this inequity as a problem to be managed, administrators should look at D&I as an opportunity and a pathway to improve organization culture as well as patient care,” Meyer says. “Diversity is too important to ignore in healthcare because so many of the people you treat come from diverse environments, some of which are underprivileged.” 

In healthcare, both clinical and administrative teams are increasingly diverse. In Northeastern’s program, there are specific courses on managing diverse teams as well as successful negotiations with vendors and internal communication in the workplace. 

Factors like gender, ethnicity, and economic background influence how patients navigate the healthcare system and engage in their own care. As a result, healthcare administrators and managers need to be mindful of these differences to ensure patients receive the best advice and care possible. 

For example, low-income populations don’t frequently visit a doctor to avoid added costs. Healthcare administrators need to generate ideas on how to encourage these patients to make the right choices for their long-term health.  

“How do you get somebody to see their doctor?” Meyer asks. “How do you get them to keep their appointment? Or follow medication orders? And how do you know when a lack of access or compliance is leading to undesirable outcomes for the patient?”  

Once healthcare administrators understand how to address these questions and apply measurements to them, they’ll be able to design and test more effective solutions for the future of healthcare. 

5. Innovation 

Innovation is the underlying theme of effective healthcare administration. Skilled administrators need to have the experience and insight to anticipate changes, adapt to them, and steer their organizations through this transformation process.  

“Administrators aren’t just pushing paper and systems anymore,” Meyer says. “They also need to be leaders of change in their organizations.” 

From streamlining administrative processes to adopting innovative, effective change management leads to more resilient, more effective healthcare delivery and operations. Even minor adjustments, such as using technology to aid in patient intake and discharge, can shorten response times and allow medical professionals and support staff to devote more time and resources where they’re needed most.  

“Administrative innovation has become truly exciting,” Meyer adds. “I see it in my student’s projects in their hospitals and specialty clinics.” 

Some examples of these project include: 

• Optimizing healthcare technologies 
• Reducing medication tracking 
• Digitizing labs and pathology to reduce costs 

“Our educational paradigm is action-focused and experiential,” Meyer concludes.  

Take Healthcare Administration to the Next Level

Becoming an effective healthcare administrator in today’s rapidly changing environment requires specialized knowledge and interdisciplinary thinking. Earning a master’s degree in management with a concentration in healthcare administration offers the frameworks, methods, and applications you need to truly understand the roles, responsibilities, and challenges of managing a healthcare delivery organization—large or small.  

Our faculty at Northeastern have in-depth knowledge in healthcare policy, finance, leadership, process innovation, and change management. By enrolling, you can equip yourself with the skills needed to improve patient outcomes and adapt to evolving industry trends.              

If you’re passionate about making meaningful contributions to the healthcare administration field, contact an admissions counselor to learn more about the master’s degree program, and discuss your career goals.