In India, healthcare is one of the largest sector in terms of growth of revenue and generation of employment opportunities. There are many drivers for growth of healthcare industry. Growing population, lifestyle diseases, technological advancements like cloud, medical devices, data analytics, deep learning etc., increasing foreign investment and government initiatives and so on.
The hospital industry in India is expected to grow with CAGR of 16 to 17 % to reach Rs. 8.6 trillion by FY 2022 from Rs.4 trillion in FY 2017 – from IBEF
Opportunities for Distance MBA in hospital and healthcare management
Distance MBA in hospital and healthcare management would open doors to opportunities in various sectors of healthcare industry. Healthcare industry is not limited to only the doctors, nurses, lab technicians and hospitals. There are many other sectors which come into play while providing healthcare services. Here is a list of key sectors of healthcare services.
- Hospitals and clinics
- Medical equipment and devices
- Clinical trials
- Telemedicine
- Medical tourism
- Health insurance
- Hospital information management systems
- Healthcare Analytics
Each of the sector provides ample career opportunities for management professionals. Let us discuss some of them in more details.
Hospital Administrator
There is large growth seen in various sizes of hospitals starting from small, medium and large. As the demand for doctors and healthcare services is growing, owner of hospitals are finding it more crucial to run the hospitals with the help of business professionals.
Due to increase regulations and growth of access to insurance, a lot of data is required to be stored and processed for compliance. This created need for software systems which can automate most of the mundane, routine tasks and make the patients data available at finger tips.
Hospital administrator role started becoming more and more important. Hospital administrator has responsibilities like hiring doctors and other staff, implementation of new clinical procedures, planning and operationalize information technology through use of hospital information management system, implement regulatory compliance and reporting, plan and mange budgets, run continuous improvement quality initiatives.
According to Payscale,
An entry-level Hospital Administrator < 5 years of experience – average compensation Rs 364,000.
Mid-level hospital administrator 5 to 10 years of experience – average compensation of Rs 464,000
A Hospital Administrator with experience > 20 years – average compensation of Rs 723,000
Project Manager, Pharmaceuticals
A pharmaceuticals project manager is entrusted with key responsibility of new product development. He manages a project from the idea to the drug launch. Most pharmaceutical companies hire management professionals who have domain knowledge or degree in Pharama and/or MBA in hospital and Healthcare. Strong skills in information technology and ability to communicate well and work with multiple stakeholders are key skills. Here project manager has deal with multiple stakeholders like biochemical engineers, technicians, physicians, scientists, and even marketing professionals.
- Typical tasks pharmaceutical project manager does are:
- To identify the potential of a drug or medication under research.
- Assemble teams for different tasks
- Do project planning and track timelines with deliverables.
- They direct research chemists and technicians to perform testing to ensure that relevant data are consistent and repeatable
- Assign personnel to arrange clinical trials and testing
- Assign teams to interpret and extract valuable information such as potential side effects and ancillary beneficial interactions of any drugs.
- Bring the medicine to the market through branding and marketing initiatives.
According to Payscale, The average pay for a Project Manager, Pharmaceuticals is Rs 645,000 per year.
Healthcare Business Analyst
Business analyst does a key role of acting as a liaison between software development team and the business/client sponsor and other stake holders. He provides the subject matter expertise in healthcare domain. His main task is to understand the customer requirements and document them so that other teams like development and testing would understand them easily. He creates visual models, proof of concept docs, various Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams like activity diagrams, sequence diagrams etc. He has to get the queries and complex requirements resolved though better stakeholder engagement.
Business analyst has to be part of meetings with business stakeholders to improve business processes.
According to Glassdoor, The average pay for a Healthcare business analyst is Rs 600,000 per year.
Manager Sales and Marketing
Manager in Sales and marketing in Pharma or hospital handles marketing of products and services. He/she is entrusted with the responsibility of creating marketing strategy and increasing the organizational brand awareness through various marketing initiatives. Some of his key tasks are
- Identify potential markets based on research and documentation
- Devise plans to deliver the appropriate messages to potential customers in target markets.
- To formulate brand plan and propose various marketing strategies in accordance to corporate policy for hospital brand.
- To execute various activities planned as per the phase wise marketing plans like Workshops Camps, Patient Education Program and Medical tourism etc.
- Monitoring of the marketing initiatives on regular basis
- Monthly and weekly detailed report of the activity should be submitted to the management
After successful completion of distance MBA in hospital and healthcare management, many challenging roles would be available. If one works hard, sky is the limit for growth.