With the number of medical and dental procedures increasing together with an escalation in the number of test available, administrators are crucial. Health care administration is vital for ensuring that the right staff, equipment, and resources are available at the right time. They would also generally be responsible for keeping waste to a minimum. It is also crucial that payment for goods and payment from patients (or their insurance companies,) are completed and recorded. In an effort to remove administrative duties from medial staff, allowing them to treat more patients, health care administrators ensure that paperwork is accurately and correctly completed and filed and that computer records are up to date. As a health care administrator the type of work you undertake will depend largely on your experience and the size of organization you are employed in. In a small medical practice, you would probably organize everything from staff recruitment to data entry and coffee making duties (when it's your turn!) Larger centers such as hospitals would employ some very senior health care administration officials who would deal with multimillion-dollar budgets for staff, capital equipment, buildings, and overheads.

There are some excellent health care administration programs around. You may learn basic computer skills for data entry and retrieval. You might learn about medical coding, budget management, procurement, scheduling, databases, or even personnel recruitment. If you have your eye on a very senior post within a large hospital, you would probably need to combine many years' experience with a higher business or management qualification.