Healthcare organizational structures prioritize efficiency and oversight, with a board of directors at the top. The president or CEO is responsible for carrying out initiatives and has an administrative cabinet. Senior executives oversee patient care and hospital operations, with departments organized by specialty.
The medical industry is a complex network of patient care facilities and workers, with the primary goal of taking care of patients cost-effectively. To this end, health care organizational structures tend to focus on efficiency and oversight. While many hospitals may differ in framework, particularly between large and small organizations or those with for-profit or non-profit missions, most follow accepted models of hierarchy well established in the business realm.
A board of directors invariably sits at the top of most organizational structures in the healthcare sector. This council may be formed by a vote of trustees in a founding organization or by hospital franchise stakeholders. Typically, it contains more affiliated hospital professionals such as doctors and researchers, but many are also stocked with local lawyers, business owners, politicians, and even celebrities who could help give the hospital a competitive edge.
A hospital’s president or chief executive officer is typically responsible for answering to the board of directors and carrying out its funding, regulatory, and research initiatives. This boss often serves as a board member or even chairman, to provide the actual facilities and its workers with at least one chairman at the table. Many non-profits stack a board to fit its particular mission. For example, the board of directors of a Catholic hospital will often have faith leaders and physicians serving, each focused on a different element of the mission.
The president will usually have an administrative cabinet. This small group of specialists often includes a chief financial officer, medical examiner, and litigation counsel. These executives may have small staffs, such as admissions staff under the comptroller. Their duties in healthcare organizational structures are primarily to serve the president and board of directors, not to serve as direct providers of patient care.
In addition to administrative executives on the staff closest to a president are other senior executives dedicated to patient care or day-to-day hospital operations. An operations manager maintains departments not directly related to patient care. A medical officer often provides leadership to those departments that provide patient services. Many hospitals also assign a nursing manager. All other departmental heads are organized under one or all of these three managers.
Hospitals are often organized to care for patients by specialty, with services such as diagnostic, therapeutic, emergency and inpatient care. These are run in separate departments, with directors and assistant directors in each. Under a director or vice president of diagnostics in the chain of command, for example, there would be multiple directors or assistant directors of key specialty services such as imaging, critical care and emergency departments.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
