Excessive hospital administration expenses increase healthcare expenditures

Harvard Business Review article estimates 95% of the hires in healthcare from 1990-2021 are non doctors with 10 of 16 non doctors work solely in non clinical roles such as administrative, receptionist, or clerk roles. You may think then these workers improve healthcare productivity or quality. However, productivity and quality hasn’t significantly increased. (https://hbr.org/2013/09/the-downside-of-health-care-job-growth)

So what are these additional workers doing. Many are dealing with excessive regulations much self impose or by the Joint Commission. The Joint Commission is a private not for profit organization which credentials hospitals. The Joint Commission is known to create excessive ridiculous rules that takes more people and money to accommodate, resources not used to improve patient care or quality. In fact, there are websites that list some of these ridiculous rules. (https://allnurses.com/stupid-impossible-things-joint-commission-t302204/)

Administrators are also known to hire their friends and relatives. At Westchester Medical Center, many of the administrators came from the same area in Long Island. Many work together at other hospitals and were hired at exorbitant salaries and bonuses. One executive who worked for about a year and received a year in severance pay. Even an administrator who was the financial executive responsible for one of the worst healthcare bankruptcy, St Vincent’s in Greenwich Village in New York City was able to get another job by moving across the country. He rose to lead Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles with the support of the Area Medical Director.

And to make matters worse, more administrators lead to decrease productivity as they come up with nonsense projects to justify their pay. Many administrators spend excessively on hospital remodeling. One administrator liken their remodeling project to the Taj Mahal. At Westchester Medical Center, they renovated the ICU and place expensive rugs in the rooms. They quickly became dirty from bodily fluids that are common during the care of ICU patients. The rugs were quickly removed as they also obstructed the beds which have wheels.