Top Technical Skills for Healthcare Administrators
Even though the pandemic has strained our medical workforce, it’s evident that the healthcare system has adapted to meet the challenge.
The medical community maintained a quality patient experience thanks to the adoption of fundamental IT technology, which was made possible by staff with exceptional computer skills needed for healthcare management.
Keep on reading to learn more about the necessary technical skills for healthcare administrators to excel in their workplace.
List of Technical Skills in Healthcare
- Healthcare IT Skills
- Data Entry and Management
- Knowledge of Medical Terminology
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office, especially Excel
- Familiarity with EMR and EHR Systems
- Research and Analytical Skills
- Coding and Billing Knowledge
- HIPAA and Regulatory Compliance
- Technical Troubleshooting and Support
- Quality Assurance and Reporting
Technical skills in healthcare are indispensable for managing the complexities of modern medical facilities. Here’s a comprehensive list of the most vital technical skills in healthcare management:
1. Healthcare IT Skills
Proficiency in using healthcare-specific IT systems like telemedicine platforms, EMR/EHR software, and patient portals is critical. Administrators must understand system operations, data privacy regulations, and troubleshooting processes to ensure smooth workflows.
2. Data Entry and Database Management
Accurate data entry involves collecting, organizing, and maintaining patient records. This skill includes fast and precise typing, knowledge of database software, and attention to detail to avoid errors that could lead to miscommunication or scheduling conflicts.
3. Knowledge of Medical Terminology
Understanding medical terminology is crucial for efficient communication with healthcare professionals. This knowledge helps administrators accurately document diagnoses, treatments, and prescriptions while avoiding errors that could compromise patient safety.
4. Microsoft Office Proficiency
While all Microsoft Office applications are helpful, Excel stands out as a must-have tool. Skills like creating PivotTables, using formulas like VLOOKUP, and automating processes with macros are essential for managing financial records, billing, and data analysis.
5. Familiarity with EMR and EHR Systems
Administrators must be adept at using Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) for internal patient data management and Electronic Health Records (EHRs) for seamless data sharing across institutions. These systems improve care coordination, making this skill essential for healthcare administrators.
6. Research and Analytical Skills
Administrators need to interpret healthcare data and extract actionable insights. This involves using data analysis tools, staying updated on healthcare trends, and making evidence-based decisions to improve efficiency and patient satisfaction.
7. Coding and Billing Knowledge
A solid understanding of healthcare billing codes (such as ICD-10 and CPT) ensures accurate billing and reduces errors. Administrators should also be familiar with insurance claim processes to resolve disputes efficiently.
8. HIPAA and Regulatory Compliance
Understanding the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other healthcare regulations is essential for maintaining patient confidentiality and ensuring compliance with federal and state laws.
9. Technical Troubleshooting and Support
Basic IT troubleshooting skills are necessary for resolving minor system issues or understanding when to escalate problems to specialized support teams. Administrators should know how to handle common software glitches and system malfunctions.
10. Quality Assurance and Reporting
Healthcare administrators are often responsible for monitoring performance metrics and ensuring quality standards are met. Skills in quality assurance software and reporting tools are critical for this aspect of their job.
Healthcare IT Skills Have Never Been More in Demand
As the world evolves in uncertain times, the skills that candidates bring to the table are becoming the new currency. For example, four-year degrees have been the traditional benchmark of consideration for many jobs.
However, verifiable healthcare technical skills are now replacing formal education as the top requirement. Demonstrable and applicable skillsets are what allow candidates to continue to thrive and climb the career ladder, even after they have landed the job.
In healthcare administration, the use of IT skills is nothing new. Still, it is extremely important that new hires have these technology skills, which make it possible for them to work without constant supervision. The question is – what are those skills, and why are they in such demand?
The non-profit organization HIMSS analyzed nearly 11,000 online job postings and, according to their research, the most in-demand healthcare technical skills are:
- Training
- Communication skills
- Organizational skills
- Writing
- Microsoft Excel
- Computer skills
- Research
Using pre-employment tests to assess applicants’ skills in job relevant areas can provide HR managers with a snapshot of their candidates’ abilities.
Hiring managers can examine each applicant in detail and compare their experience and personality traits to determine who will perform best in the open position and has the hardskills for healthcare administration. This allows the decision makers to offer positions to highly-skilled candidates before they are scooped up by the competition.
Let’s review the tools and processes reliant on technology that members of a healthcare administration office work with on a regular basis.
Rapid Growth in Number of Medical Video Appointments
Healthcare organizations like the Greater Baltimore Medical Center (GBMC) have embraced telemedicine at unprecedented levels. In 2020, GBMC’s telemedicine interactions grew by over 22,670%, demonstrating the demand for healthcare professionals skilled in virtual platforms.
This shift highlights the importance of technical skills for healthcare administration, such as managing video conferencing tools and ensuring high patient satisfaction during virtual consultations.
Rise in EMR and EHR Adoption
The introduction of electronic medical records has modernized the healthcare industry significantly. It’s allowed better overall service of healthcare organizations, higher patient satisfaction, and a better overall experience and healthcare management.
An EMR, which is a digital counterpart of the paper patient records in the clinician’s office, stores the medical and treatment histories of patients in a single practice.
They make it simple to monitor relevant data, determine which clients are required for preventive screenings and checks, assess how patients are doing on particular values (e.g., blood sample values), and analyze and manage overall healthcare quality within the practice.
Electronic health records (EHRs) function as an extension of EMRs. EHRs are designed to be used outside of the health institution that initially collects and compiles the data.
They gather and share the patient’s information with other healthcare practitioners or institutions, so the treatment can be prescribed with as much information as possible. With EHRs, the patient’s information can travel anywhere with them: to the specialist, another clinic, the next state, and even across the globe.
The widespread adoption of EHRs has made it a necessity for medical office employees to be computer-literate. But, as the HIMSS analysis shared above shows, that is only one of several important technical skills for healthcare professionals.
Three Crucial Healthcare Administration Skills
In our previous article, we detailed the duties of three typical job roles commonly found in a medical office: the medical receptionist, the medical secretary, and the medical assistant.
Here’s a list of technical skills in healthcare that can help administrators.
Data Entry and Management
Data entry proficiency includes data gathering and database input, as well as maintaining accurate records on file. These skills are especially important for medical receptionists.
Fast and accurate typing and experience with spreadsheets and forms are essential for scheduling appointments and recording patient information. Data entry mistakes can easily lead to organizational problems later.
For example, if the date of an appointment is wrongly entered, both the doctor’s and the patient’s time is lost.
Proficiency in Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is considered an indispensable tool for any office work, including healthcare management. Of the many programs in this toolkit, such as Word, Powerpoint and Outlook, knowing how to use Excel is one of the indispensable technical skills in healthcare for anyone applying for the job of a medical secretary.
The medical secretary’s list of everyday tasks includes processing medical records and handling billing and insurance claims. Therefore, knowing their way around Excel formatting and functions (for example, AutoSum or PivotTables) is key, and these computer skills needed for healthcare management are important.
Having an employee who isn’t well-versed in Excel can lead to bill processing mistakes. That creates many future problems, such as delayed payments and increased patient stress.
Fixing even the simplest of errors would remove unnecessary exchanges between the patient and administration, which erode patient satisfaction and hurt the bottom line.
Knowledge of Medical Terminology
Medical terminology is the shared language of medical professionals, especially for medical assistants. It’s part of the medical assistant’s role to quickly record the doctor’s preliminary assessments during an examination, followed by prognosis and treatment recommendations.
Speed and accuracy are essential during this task. Medical assistants’ knowledge of medical terminology allows them to take notes in real time without error. Knowledge of medical terminology is also crucial if the medical assistant’s job includes speaking to the patient and explaining their instructions.
Improve Your Healthcare Recruitment Strategies with Pre-Employment Tests
Finding candidates with the right mix of soft and technical skills in healthcare administration is challenging.
Relying on resumes alone has been proven to be inefficient, biased, and inaccurate. On top of that, applicants have been known to be less-than-honest on their resumes, which can be very costly for the hiring company.
Pre-employment tests bring the recruiting process more objectivity by providing results that are standardized across all applicants. Employers can then rely on the information provided by the tests to make more data-driven hiring decisions.
Unlike face-to-face interviews, pre-employment testing allows hiring managers to assess a wide range of talents and personality traits. They allow for the evaluation of candidates’ cognitive ability, technical skills for healthcare professionals, subject-area expertise, and a wide range of soft and hardskills for healthcare administration, among other things.
By providing objective, verifiable data that predict work performance, pre-employment testing can increase the quality of hires and reduce the number of bad hires.
Employers can also save time by adopting pre-employment tests to reduce the amount of time spent reading resumes and conducting interviews. As a result of increased staff productivity and lower turnover, the hiring costs decrease and profitability increases.
While most hiring managers focus on the hard skills required, pre-employment tests ensure that additional skills – soft skills – are also considered.
Healthcare professionals need exceptional communication skills, compassion and patience, honesty, and the ability to work as part of a team. Without these abilities, service quality suffers and patients will feel the consequences.
Basic skills are important too. Medical Office skills tests can show basic skills levels for the medical staff, including computer skills, typing/data entry speed, and attention to detail. Other types of pre-employment tests such as Workplace Success Profile tests can show that candidates have desired employee personality traits.
EmployTest offers a variety of tests that can save time and money for hiring managers looking to deliver quality hires to their company, regardless of the industry.
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