There are many types of careers in the medical world outside of becoming a doctor or nurse. Every hospital needs good administrators to keep the business running. While we often don’t see a hospital’s primary goal as making money, they are businesses and without administration teams, they couldn’t exist.

But as a hospital administrator, what kind of work will you do?

That all depends on your career choice. The top dog at any hospital is the chief executive officer, but there are a number of other positions available to those with administrative degrees as well, from health managers to vice presidents. In addition, you might not actually work at a hospital. With a degree in this field, you’ll also be eligible to work at nursing homes, hospital care centers, home health care companies, clinics, drug abuse rehabilitation centers, and more.

Again, your daily tasks depend on your job title, but some of the most common types of work include:

• Planning a budget and ensuring that the facility sticks to that budget, cutting costs if necessary
• Setting rates for health services that patients receive at the facility and working with insurance companies to serve as many people as possible
• Recruiting, hiring, evaluating, and firing staff members, from advanced surgeons to low-level nurses and even volunteers
• Evaluating research methods, new drugs, and equipment to determine what will be available at the facility
• Attending board meetings to discuss goals and progress made toward them
• Developing departments through hiring staff and running quality assurance checks
• Speaking at public events and to the press, as well as addressing the facility’s staff
• Acting as a liaison between the facility’s staff and outside groups, like the government and drug companies
• Participating in fund raising events for the facility to lower health care costs
• Dealing with lawsuits, which happen to every facility, regardless of the quality care provided
• Creating staff and patient policies, as well as writing guides and handbooks for these policies
• Overseeing data entry and health informatics to ensure that records are safe and easily accessible

As a hospital administrator, you may work odd hours. Often, administrators need to be at facilities late into the night to get work done, and because health care facilities are usually open twenty-four hours a day, you could get called to work in the middle of the night to handle a problem.

If you want to become a hospital administrator, you need to have at least a bachelor’s degree in the field. Many positions are only available to those with a master’s degree or higher, so if you seem stuck in a low-level administrative position, going back to school for an advanced degree can propel your career to the next level. Once you have a master’s degree, a number of doors will open, and you could work as a chief financial officer, vice president, or even chief executive officer at a medical facility.