How Does Leadership in Healthcare Differ From Leadership in Other Industries?

Managers in every field require certain characteristics to make great leaders. These include self-awareness, accountability, self-awareness, and communication. However. some industries—like healthcare—require leaders cut from a different cloth.

Healthcare leadership is unique compared to other industries, due to the complex and fast-paced environment. If you’re studying to become a manager in the field, understanding the importance of leadership in nursing, and other healthcare occupations, is essential.

Studies have been conducted on healthcare leadership and its differences from other industries. A management position in healthcare requires strong analysis skills, emotional intelligence, and the ability to adapt while juggling an ever-changing landscape filled with unprecedented challenges. 

Types of healthcare leadership

Before we delve into what makes health leadership roles unique, and the array of challenges they face, it’s essential to understand the roles themselves. Healthcare leadership can be found in a variety of settings and positions, and are split into executive, management, and advocacy roles.

Executive

The highest-ranking roles in healthcare are executive positions, like chief medical officers and chief financial managers for hospitals. In most cases, these executive positions are either physicians or business administrators with years of managerial experience.

The goal of executive levels is to oversee and create strategic plans for the rest of the organization. In healthcare, this could be a clinic or a hospital. They also need to have a comprehensive understanding of the healthcare system, policies, and regulations.

Management

Upper and middle management roles exist in the healthcare industry, employed in a variety of settings. For instance, you can find them in hospitals and clinics, nursing facilities, and health-care-related operations at schools, and medical research organizations.

The exact responsibilities will depend on the organization, but management positions are typically more hands-on than executive roles. Management will usually overlook a team, board, or department, handling operations and implementing policies or procedures based on executive decisions.

Advocacy

In healthcare leadership, advocacy roles assist with developing the policies and practices that influence patient outcomes, workers’ rights, and public health. Some great examples of advocacy groups in the U.S. are the American Nursing Association and the American Academy of Physician Assistants.

The impact of a healthcare leader

If you’ve ever needed medical attention—especially urgent—you know how important an effective healthcare system is. It’s a high-stakes industry, where the result can be life or death.

The impact of an effective healthcare leader can’t be understated. The decisions they make have a profound effect on everyone they manage, as well as patients, and the people around them. 

Strong healthcare leadership is decisive, has great analysis skills, and is committed to the industry. Healthcare facilities require strong leadership and management to consistently deliver high-quality results and patient outcomes at all levels.

How is a healthcare leader different?

What sets healthcare leadership apart from other industries is the unique problems they face. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic is a great example of an unprecedented challenge in the industry. Everyone in the health sector, including leaders, had to quickly adapt on a global scale. 

Even though the pandemic affected every sector—without a doubt, it impacted the health system and healthcare industry the most. It’s a shining example of all the unique difficulties the healthcare leadership had to overcome, adapt to, and evolve, compared to other industry leaders. 

Following is a list of just a few of the issues that leaders in healthcare tackle daily. While leaders in other industries will have to manage a few responsibilities on the list, they rarely have all combined—like healthcare leaders have to.

• As the cost of living is growing, the price of providing healthcare services is growing at a rate that is outpacing revenue—leading to a stark decline in operating income. Healthcare leaders have to balance this while still trying to stay affordable for patients.
  
  
• Healthcare is one of the most regulated industries. Policies are also changing at a quicker rate than other sectors—so healthcare professionals are always having to adapt and change.
  
  
• Healthcare leaders now need to accommodate the huge shift from episodic care to long-term care for chronic conditions and population health.
  
  
• Healthcare leadership is always running under high stress, as the medical field is high-stakes regarding patient outcomes and care.
  
  
• Unlike some other industries, most organizations in the healthcare sector require a high level of combined leadership—sometimes even on a global level, as we’ve seen with COVID-19.
  
  
• Leaders are also having to work with an unprecedented pace of technological innovation, while also having to keep costs affordable for patents.

The underlying factor is that healthcare leadership is different from other sectors because of how rapidly changing and high-stakes it is. No other industry leaders have to hold in their hands the lives of thousands to millions of people.

Along with this, there’s always uncertainty when it comes to health concerns. COVID-19 was unpredictable, and leaders in the medical industry had to adapt incredibly fast on a global level—and always have to be prepared in the case a similar situation happens again.