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10 Best Books for Nursing Home Administrators

Are you wondering what type of book is best for nursing home administrators? If YES, here are 10 best books for nursing home administrators.

Nursing home administrators are tasked with maintaining the business and organizational side of long term care facilities. These professionals are also involved on a personal level, focusing on resident care. Above all, the utmost priorities are quality and safety.

To achieve them, NHAs are expected to combine leadership and financial skills with a thorough understanding of the aging process and medical industry.

Although the minimum level of education required to work in this field is a bachelor’s degree, many NHAs go on to earn master’s degrees—usually an MBA or an MHA—to gain the executive level knowledge imperative to run a large and specialized, healthcare organization.

They will also have to be certified and licensed by federal and state jurisdictions. Continuing education and professional development are also important in staying up to date on the vast range of evolving issues involved in the management of long term care.

Nursing home administrators take care of a cherished, fragile, and growing segment of the population. They do so with a mixture of warm compassion and keen intelligence. They oversee a wide landscape of differing terrain. They manage a long term care facility’s staff—from hiring, training, and evaluation, to schedule.

They also take control of the organization’s finances and design budgets, manage billing and reimbursement, monitor payroll, and report to board-level governance. Indeed, the field of nursing home administrators is a field considered to be in its infancy.

While this profession has been around for some time, the field has experienced a massive boom over the past 10 years. The past 2-3 years have seen the greatest amount of growth, with the Affordable Care Act, an aging population, and growth within the healthcare field.

As a nursing home administrator, you need to make sure you have a solid understanding of the senior care industry and what is involved in running an excellent senior living community. Though there are few books directed specifically to nursing home administrators, experts in the field have suggested a few of the best reads for providers who want to improve as leaders and business owners.

Best Books for Nursing Home Administrators

  1. Managing Health Care Business Strategy

Managing Health Care Business Strategy buttresses the most critical aspects of planning and implementing strategy in a healthcare organization in very practical, an actionable language with relevant, real-life, and hypothetical examples throughout.

By leveraging simple, accessible language, the author explains everything you need to know to get started managing strategy in a healthcare organization.

The book includes a description of the basic multi-step process of establishing and then managing a strategic plan, as well as specific strategic options (merger/acquisition, reorganization, joint venture) and some of the popular tools for analyzing strategic situations (balanced scorecard, Six Sigma, SWOT).

The second edition is a major expansion offering 10 additional chapters that examine the finer details of formulating and implementing strategic initiatives.

  1. Introduction to Health Care Management

Introduction to Health Care Management, Fourth Edition is a well detailed, reader-friendly, introductory healthcare management text that encompasses a wide variety of healthcare settings, from hospitals to nursing homes and clinics.

Filled with examples to engage the reader’s imagination, the important issues in healthcare management, such as ethics, cost management, strategic planning and marketing, information technology, and human resources, are all thoroughly covered.

Guidelines and rubrics along with various case studies make this text both student-friendly and teacher-friendly. It is the ideal resource for students of healthcare management, nursing, allied health, business administration, pharmacy, occupational therapy, public administration, and public health

  1. Essentials Of The U.S. HealthCare System 3rd Edition

Written by best-selling authors Leiyu Shi and Douglas Singh, Essentials of the U.S. HealthCare System is one of the most iconic testaments to the basic structures and operations that underlie the American health system. It is a wonderful resource for topics such as health policy, allied health, health administration, and much more.

The book outlines the complexities of healthcare organization and finance and presents a solid overview of how the various components fit together

  1. Managerial Epidemiology for Health Care Organizations

Managerial Epidemiology for HealthCare Organizations offers readers a thorough and extensive understanding of the application of epidemiological principles to the delivery of healthcare services and management of healthcare organizations.

As health administration becomes evidence- and population-based, it becomes very necessary to understand the impact of disease on populations of people in a service area. This book also explains the need for health organizations’ to demonstrate emergency preparedness and responds to bioterrorism threats.

As a follow-up to the standard text in the field, this book also brings to the fore certain core epidemiology principles and clearly illustrates their essential applications in planning, evaluating, and managing healthcare for populations.

This book also buttresses how healthcare executives can align the practice of epidemiology into their various management functions and is rich with current examples, concepts, and case studies that reinforce the essential theories, methods, and applications of managerial epidemiology

  1. Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs

Anyone in the senior living industry looking to stay ahead of the curve and adapt to the new methods of increasing occupancy at your community this book is for you. Note that the lessons can be applied to almost any industry but as the population ages and the “adult children” of seniors play a larger role in the senior care decisions this is book becomes more and more important.

Inbound marketing for senior care is an inevitable fact (at least in our eyes) and those that adapt to the changing times will benefit the most.

  1. Health Care Ethics

Centered around the four central themes of healthcare ethics (theoretical foundations and issues for individuals, organizations, and society), Health Care Ethics, Fourth Edition brings together the insights of a diverse panel of leading experts in the fields of bioethics, long-term care, and health administration, among others.

Students will leverage this platform to develop an extensive toolbox of analytical and problem-solving skills.Have it in mind that the fully revised and updated Fourth Edition sees to current changes in healthcare, including three new chapters covering ethical issues related to Health Information Management, Patient Safety, and Epidemics.

All other chapters have been updated to reflect the most recent developments in medical technology and new challenges faced by healthcare professionals in the era of the ACA.

  1. Senior Living Communities: Operations Management and Marketing for Assisted Living, Congregate, and Continuing Care Retirement Communities.

Despite the epically long title, this is a wonderful and educative book on senior living operations, management, and marketing. In this book, the author explains resident relations, different operating methods, staffing issues, sales and marketing strategies, financial analysis, budgeting, and different ways to monitor costs.

The book also explains issues particular to dementia care and the appendix contains a department-by-department audit of senior living operations

  1. Legal And Ethical Essentials Of HealthCare Administration

Legal & Ethical Essentials of HealthCare Administration, Second Edition is the ideal text for courses that combine a study of both the legal and ethical aspects of healthcare administration.

Coined from George Pozgar’s best-selling textbook, Legal Aspects of HealthCare Administration, 11th Edition, this detailed text offers the necessary knowledge to become conversant with both legal and ethical issues pertinent to the healthcare profession.

Leveraging reader-friendly language, the book unearths the complexities of the legal system and provides the reader with a strong foundation in healthcare law and ethics.

Note that readers will gain a solid understanding of what steps providers of care, legislative bodies, patients, patient families, and patient advocates can take to help prevent the wide variety of harmful events that can occur in healthcare. It offers a review of health law topics in an interesting and understandable format, leading the reader through the complicated maze of the legal system.

  1. Senior Housing Marketing: How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full

This book was written to help CEOs, CFOs, administrators, and marketing directors understand if their marketing teams are performing well with every single marketing encounter. Find out if your marketing staff might be sabotaging potential sales.

Or learn to discover new strategies to develop a strong and consistent program for maintaining high levels of occupancy in your community. Note that all strategies within this book will cover the important business issues and get you and your staff into the mindset of how to strategically sell your retirement community.

10. The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People Who Have Alzheimer Disease, Related Dementias, and Memory Loss

Aside from the well known operational side of the senior care industry, there’s also the more practical side of caring for aging seniors who are dealing with memory loss or Alzheimer’s. This book is always among one of the best rated books on the topic of caring for loved ones dealing with these issues.

Now completely revised and updated, the book includes the latest information on the causes of dementia, managing the early stages, and finding appropriate living arrangements for the person who has dementia. It is a must-read for anybody in the memory loss area of senior care.

Long term care is a 24-hour endeavor. Improving your leadership skills takes consistent effort and adaptation. By studying and applying principles taught by experienced professionals, you demonstrate that you take your business seriously and are willing to educate yourself to improve.