Healthcare has been changing all across the globe. New technologies, changes in healthcare delivery, and a worldwide pandemic have led to many changes in an already-complex healthcare system.
Its expected these changes will pose formidable challenges for healthcare administrators and hospital managers. Costs have escalated in almost every area, impacting healthcare providers and patients. The biggest challenge is financial insecurity. Providers are also affected by supervisory concerns while administrators struggle to protect patient records from cyber attacks.
Challenges you may face as a hospital administrator:
- Rising healthcare costs: Healthcare has always been costly, but the prices keep increasing. As a healthcare manager, you must find ways to counter this spike so that people can afford quality care and the hospital’s budget doesn’t suffer.
- Hiring quality workers: The demand for qualified, experienced nurses and hospital administrators has risen since the pandemic. Shortage in quality personnel is likely to go up. Hospital administrators will face the challenge of hiring and retaining top medical professionals.
- Improving telehealth: During the pandemic, telehealth saved thousands of lives. Doctors and nurses had to turn to virtual healthcare because of social distancing. However, even after the pandemic subsided, many healthcare leaders favour its permanent inclusion in our healthcare system. Expanding telehealth may benefit patients but can trigger new problems like cyber security threats and privacy concerns.
- Dealing with cyber threats: With advanced technologies, cybercriminals are becoming cleverer and more dangerous. At the start of the pandemic, when healthcare managers were busy tackling the Covid outbreak, cyber criminals exploited the loopholes in healthcare systems worldwide. Incidents of ransomware, data breaches, insider threats, DDoS attacks, deception scams, etc became rampant. Today, hospital administrators must work carefully with data security personnel and cyber security experts to protect patient records.
In India, an aging population and lifestyle-related diseases are the prime issues leading to a need for specialized healthcare. There is a growing need for skilled administrators who can plan to meet these challenges. In tackling such challenges, a lot of time and money meant for operational training, research, and buying equipment, may have to be spent. Healthcare companies must understand the preferences and needs of consumers. This insight will help them to develop a targeted approach addressing the specific needs of a target audience to achieve high levels of patient satisfaction.
