INTRODUCTION TO HOSPITAL
ADMINISTRATION
Session Objectives
• Discusses about the need for Hospital Administration
• Discusses about the Role of Hospital Administration
• To know the function of hospital
• To know the Challenges in Hospital Administration
Session Outcomes
At the end of this session, participants will be able to
• Describe the need for hospital administration and their role in hospital
• Explain the function of hospital
• Describe the challenges that are faced in hospital administration
Agenda
•Hospital Administration
•Difference between Hospital and Industry
•Functions of Hospital
•Challenges in Hospital Administration
•Condition Peculiar to Administrative work in Hospitals
Hospital Administration
• Administration – planned and scientific basis – for all institution
• Plays vital role in the function of hospital
• To function efficiently – hospital today must be organised and administrated in
scientific manner – for which ever staff members should be trained
• Why we need administration in hospital? – No of people who use hospital has
increased
• Hopitals lags far behind business and industry in
1. management policies and
2. administrative function
• No cost accounting
• All decisions made by trustees and medical staffs.
Hospital Administration
conti…
• Later Hospitals realised
1. How can we obtain more cooperation from public?
2. Why do so many patients leave against medical advice?
3. Why is there such a high staff turnover?
4. Why do patients seem to be unhappy – on one floor and so satisfied on another?
5. Hospitals Main and One Goal – Best Possible Patient Care – Lost due to Lack of
administration
• Thus greater attention will be needed toward hospital administration in the present
and in future.
Hospital Administration
conti…
• Role – simple words
1. Planning
2. Organising
3. Staffing
4. Controlling
5. Evaluvating
6. Use new technique operational research & behavioural science to optimised the
resource
• As hospital administrator – consider selecting
1. Qualified and trained Doctors
2. Improve medical facilities – trained operators and employees
Distinction between Hospital and
Industry
• The consumers of the services provided in a hospital are physically or mentally ill
and are rendered services within the four walls of the hospital
• The customers of the hospital have individual needs and require highly
personalized and custom-made services.
• The diagnostic, therapeutic and preventive services provided by physicians, nurses
and technicians, with the aid of expensive and specialized equipment's and
medication are tailored to the needs of each individual consumer.
• The product of Hospital is service to people.
• Hospital deals daily with the life, suffering, recovery and death of human beings
• Administrative personnel needs combination of knowledge, understanding, traits,
abilities and skills.
Functions of Hospital
1. To provide care for the sick and injured
2. Training of physicians, nurses and other personnel.
1. Hospital is a complex and specialised organisation – approved schools –
medical & paramedical education – different councils – associations – courses
– implant training.
3. Prevention of disease and promotion of health
1. Duty of hospital to cooperate with government agencies – to treat
communicable and non-communicable disease, notify to the recognized
authorities, assist in vaccination.
4. Advancement of research in scientific medicine
Challenges in Hospital Administration
• Will come from within the health field as well as from the public
1. Business and professional leaders who initiated into the hospital scene as trustee
2. Physician owned hospital concern about facilities and service
3. Professional organizations – prescribe standards of hospital operations
4. Academicians concerned about matching the requirement of the patient and
administrations.
5. Labour demanding standards of employment at least equal to other industry.
6. Members of Registered Society Hospitals
7. Shareholders of corporates
• All face increasing professionalism threatening their power and existence their by
decentralization in decision making
Challenges in Hospital Administration
conti……
• No CEO of any hospital can able to run the hospital without collecting fund from
the patient.
• New challenge – environmental friendly – what we do if the hospital is not clean?
Condition Peculiar to
Administrative work in Hospitals
1. The consumers of the services provided in a hospital are physically or mentally ill
and are rendered services within the four walls of the hospital
2. The customers of the hospital have individual needs and require highly
personalized and custom-made services.
3. The functions like food preparation, housekeeping, laundry, maintenance,
purchasing, nursing, pharmacy, radiology, clinical lab, physiotherapy are to be
provided continuously, round the clock, every day a year.
4. All the customers are ill and emotional, only capable administrator can understand
and deal with human relations
Condition Peculiar to Administrative work in Hospitals
conti……
5. Nurses and certain other personnel must accept direction from both the matron and
physicians under whom they work closely every day, where this situation does not
exit in other organisation.
6. Handicapped by low wages, rigid discipline and some apprehension of exposure to
disease, hospital personnel are expected to maintain a very high level of
efficiency, as their functioning affects the lives of patients.
7. Another way in which responsibilities and activities of the hospital administrator
differ from his counter part in other fields is in the amount and variety of training
programme that the hospital has to provide. Medical interns and residents (6
months to 1 year), nurses (3 to 4 years), x-ray technicians (2 years), medical
laboratory technicians (2 years), Physiotherapists (4 years), pharmacists (2 years),
medical social workers (2 years), dieticians (2 years), nurse aides and nursing
orderlies (1 year).
Condition Peculiar to Administrative work in Hospitals
conti……
9. Just as administration in hospitals duffers from that in most other fields, similarly,
public relations aspects and problems of hospitals are more pervasive, delicate
and volatile.
10. The efficiency and quality of health care services in any hospital is directly
dependent on the use of bio-medical equipments in diagnosis, surgery and
therapeutic process. So the maintenance and management of these bio-medical
equipments is complex because there is acute shortage of technical hands who have
suitable and adequate training in the maintenance and repairing of these
specialized hi-tech equipments.
Condition Peculiar to Administrative work in Hospitals
conti……
10.The introduction of consumer Protection Act, 1986 and subsequently, the
Supreme court judgment bringing doctors under the purview of this act have evoked
diverse reactions.
11.Hospital waste management is another peculiar condition to administrative work
in hospital and has become a burning issue these days for hospital administrators, as
increased awareness of health and its related problems amongst the general public has
led to the demand for comprehensive health care facilities which in turn require
frequent visits to hospitals by the patients to undergo various tests.
• The hospital waste is not like domestic waste, but a potentially hazardous
waste.
• Its unspecific disposal may poses serious problems to the public in general,
and the hospital administrator in particular, as it results in increased morbidity
due to chemical and radioactive toxicity in the environment and
transmission of various diseases.
Test your understanding
1. What is hospital administration?
2. What is the function of hospital?
3. What is the role of hospital administrator?
4. Differentiate Hospital and Industry
5. List the challenges faced in hospital administration.
References
1. R.C. Goyal, Hospital Administration and Human Resource Management,
PHI, 4th Edition, 2006.
