What Are the Duties of a Health Care Manager & Administrator?

by Aurelio Locsin, Demand Media
Health care managers give status reports to medical staff.

Health care managers give status reports to medical staff.

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Doctors, nurses and other health care staff have enough to do at medical facilities by diagnosing and treating medical conditions. But unless they tend to administrative details such as marketing, accounting or budgeting, their health care enterprises cannot succeed. Health care managers and administrators handle the business end of the medical profession by performing several duties.

Clerical Duties

Also known as medical services managers or health care executives, health care administrators manage the administrative tasks of hospitals, medical laboratories, physician practices and other health care facilities. In small offices, they may be the only administrators answering phones, filing patient records, issuing and paying bills, and processing insurance claims. Larger facilities may have enough work to assign a single task to inexperienced administrators. For example, an administrator may only handle processing patient payments. In addition, new workers may only perform tasks while under the supervision of more experienced staff.

Management Duties

In large enterprises, administrators with experience not only work independently but can initiate projects. They also manage subordinate administrative staff. They hire, train, and monitor clerks and secretaries, assign schedules and tasks, and develop goals as well as strategies for reaching those goals. They consult with department heads and medical staff on their administrative needs, take care of maintaining and repairing their physical facilities, and represent their organizations at investor meetings or governing boards. They also handle finances, such as creating budgets, calculating and issuing patient bills, and negotiating insurance claims.


Administrator duties vary by job title and type of facility. Some examples include nursing home administrators who manage the concerns of business and residents in nursing homes. All states require them to be licensed. Clinical managers are responsible for a specific department, such as surgery or nursing, in a hospital or larger health care facility. Health information managers organize and maintain patient records and keep them secure by following the latest technology and laws regarding health information systems. Assistant administrators work under department heads and may be assigned specific tasks, such as collecting health information or processing medical records.

Training and Compensation

To learn the skills necessary for their duties, health care managers must typically have a bachelor’s degree in public health, public administration or business administration. However, many also have master’s degrees. Courses generally cover hospital management, accounting and budgeting, strategic planning, human resources administration, law and ethics, and health information systems. Health care managers and administrators earned a mean annual $96,030 per year, or $46.17 per hour, as of May 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over a third of the 287,560 professionals worked for general medical and surgical hospitals to average an annual $102,040 yearly, or $49.08 hourly. The best pay was in insurance and employee benefit funds at a mean $139,400 yearly, or $67.02 hourly.

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