Health Services Administration (B.S.H.S.)
Why Health Services Administration?
As a person, I just want to be able to help people in the best ways I can think of. I thought that I could do that through nursing and that would be the best and only option for me, but it wasn’t. After taking the My Majors quiz, I had “Media Arts” majors listed as my number 1 choice, so I looked into it and found management among the related careers. After digging through the various management jobs I found “Medical and Health Services Manager”. That’s how I found the Health Services Administration major. With this major I can still help people within a hospital. What I find interesting is that I can still help people within hospitals with this job without any medical degree.
Interesting Facts
- Healthcare administration is the management of all the non-clinical functions involved in operating a healthcare facility, from day-to-day operations to staffing to budgeting and finance to long-term strategic planning to ensure the success of the healthcare provider or system.
2. The primary roles of today’s professionals in healthcare administration include:
- Human resources management
- Financial management
- Cost accounting
- Data collection and analysis
- Strategic planning
- Marketing
- Maintenance functions of the organization
- Providing the most basic social services: the care of dependent people at the most vulnerable points in their lives.
- Maintaining the moral and social order of healthcare organizations
- Serving as patient advocates
- Serving as arbitrators in situations where there are competing values
- Serving as intermediaries for the various professional groups practicing within the organization
3. Some of the challenges professionals in healthcare administration face today include:
- Ensuring effective, efficient healthcare services for communities
- Shortages of nurses and other healthcare workers
- Concern for the safety and quality of healthcare services
- Rising healthcare costs
- An aging population
- Rapidly changing medical terminology and practice
4. Healthcare administration may involve the oversight and management of:
- An entire healthcare system
- Specific facilities, such as physician’s practices, hospitals, and home health agencies
- Specific departments or units, such as critical care units, emergency departments, and cardiac care units
- Specific clinical areas, such as nursing, physical therapy, and cardiology
- Specific areas, such as staffing, facility administration, admissions, and finances
Career with Health Services Administration
A career one could get with the Health Services Administration Major is the Medical and Health Services Manager position.
A health services manager plans, directs, coordinates and supervises the delivery of health care in an entire facility or a single department. People who work in this profession are sometimes called health care managers or administrators. They may also have job titles that reflect their areas of specialization. Nursing home administrator, medical records manager, or practice administrator are just a few examples. Their median Salary is $111,680
Requirements for Entering Health Services Administration Program
- Must be completed with a C or better; C- is not acceptable
- Application deadlines are February 15th, May 15th and October 15th
- CHP 200 and STAT 130M must be completed with grade of C or better before submitting program application
- Students must be admitted to the program before enrolling in any 300/400 level CHP major courses
- Lower division general education requirements must be complete before enrolling in 300/400 level CHP major courses.
- Elective credits may be needed to achieve 120 credit hours required for the degree. Upper Division General Education is met by Management Minor.
Plan
Classes Required
| Lower-Division General Education | |
| Written Communication (grade of C or better required in both courses) | 6 |
| Mathematics (STAT 130M required; must be completed with a grade of C or better prior to submission of the BSHS program application) | 3 |
| Human Creativity | 3 |
| Interpreting the Past | 3 |
| Literature | 3 |
| The Nature of Science | 8 |
| Information Literacy and Research (HLTH 120G preferred) | 3 |
| Language and Culture | 0-6 |
| Oral Communication (met in the major by CHP 400, CHP 450, and CHP 415W or CHP 430W) | |
| Human Behavior | 3 |
| Philosophy and Ethics (met in the major by CHP 400) | |
| Impact of Technology (met in the major by CHP 485) | |
| Total Hours | 32-38 |
How to Gain Professional Experiences to Learn More About Health Services Administration
The internship (CHP 468), a class required to take, is designed and implemented to ensure that students achieve the following objectives:
- Practical experience in a health setting via exposure to an organization and/or community context that generates health activities.
- Acquisition of practical skills via related field assignments that challenge students to utilize knowledge of competencies learned from the academic curriculum and improved understanding of the political, economic, social and organizational context within which public health and health services administrative activities operate.
Internship is a planned, supervised and evaluated exercise that serves as a culminating experience for students pursuing the BSHS degree.
Advisor for Health Services Administration
| Advisor | Office | Phone |
Jim Bellamy | HLTH 3112 | 683-6180 |