In hospitals like all businesses there are several levels or tiers to its structure and each level has its own sublevels that as a whole make up the facility. Hospitals are not just filled with Doctors and nurses there are many other aspects that go into the day to day operations. Beginning with the Administration aspect of a hospital, those in charge of the business portion of the facility, including human resources and billing/collections.
These people include a board of directors, HR employees, and several support positions. Administration keeps the bottom line on track. After admin, you have the Medical division. This tier is where the Chief of Staff who is the go between for medical personal and administration, Physicians and other Doctoral level professionals who oversee the bulk of patient care. Cam therapeutic modalities paper then there is the Nursing division which is comprises the largest level of hospital care, includes nurses of different levels and specialties, as well as nurse managers that supervise the nurses.
Then there are the allied health professionals such as techs, medical assistants and Para-professionals. At the bottom of the pyramid would be hospital support services including nutrition services, maintenance, and housekeeping. In my current position we have a shorter but similar line of hierarchy. We are a small clinic owned by a large corporation out of Tennessee that handles almost all of the administration aspects of our operations. More locally there is a regional manager that will have either a Bachelors in business administration or in Health care administration.
These individuals are in charge of hiring for clinics in their area, as well as overseeing the profit and services of those clinics. There is a single Physician who manages the overall care for the 7 clinics in our region. In each clinic there is either a Family Nurse Practitioner or a Physician’s Assistant who runs the clinic and sees patients, they are assisted by one or two Medical Assistants/Patient Care Techs.
The channels of authority are fairly simple; MA’s report to NP/PA’s who report to the Dr. who reports to the regional manager who in turn is the go between for the clinics and corporate. For the most part the levels of a hospital and those of a small clinic are basically the same just on a smaller scale. I think in any facility you are going to see the same type of structure just simply because of the natural hierarchy of medical professionals themselves.
