Best Online Healthcare Administration Associate Degrees

Are you someone who is interested in healthcare, great at organizing people, and a skilled communicator? Then you might love a career in healthcare administration.

Healthcare administrators work behind the scenes at hospitals and other healthcare settings to keep everything running smoothly. They manage new hires, the budget, client records, policies, procedures, and legal requirements. It’s an important, in-demand, and well-paid career.

Earning your associate degree in healthcare administration is a great way to learn if this is the best path for you. Here’s how to get started:

An online associate degree in healthcare administration is a great option for anyone looking to enter the workforce quickly and start building a career. With this degree, you can qualify you for many entry-level positions in healthcare. But many people use this two-year program as a jumping-off point into a bachelor’s degree, which prepares them for many higher-paid positions.

Yes, it can certainly be worth it — especially if your goal is to gain access to entry-level positions in healthcare and start gaining valuable work experience.

Because an associate degree can save you a lot of time and cost (compared to a bachelor’s degree), you’re more likely to start your career with less debt. This means you might have more financial freedom to choose where you want to live and work.

And if you decide to level up your career in healthcare, pursuing an online bachelor’s degree is one option. There are plenty of great online bachelor’s programs available, and having your associate degree in healthcare administration can put you ahead of the game. Your employer may even pay for some of your tuition costs!

With an associate degree in healthcare administration, you can pursue administrative and supportive roles within the healthcare industry. You can work as a medical assistant, medical secretary, and medical records technician. These jobs are usually in hospitals, physicians’ offices, clinics, and other healthcare settings.

Medical assistant is a common career for graduates with an associate degree in healthcare administration. According to the BLS, these professionals make a median annual salary of $42,000 as of May 2023. However, salaries can depend on factors like experience, location, and employer.

For example, medical secretaries made an average annual salary of $42,140 as of April 2024, according to Payscale. You can also choose to continue your education and pursue higher-level degrees. More education can prepare you for roles that pay more money.

An associate degree can be a more affordable way to get two years of college education under your belt. The average annual tuition and fees at a two-year public college were $3,564 in 2021-2022 (compared to nearly $10,000 at a four-year public school).

An online healthcare administration associate degree will take you two years of full-time enrollment to complete.

Healthcare administrators are responsible for steering healthcare organizations in the right direction. Some of their duties include:

Some of a healthcare administrator’s responsibilities can be done from home — like strategic planning, paperwork, and budgeting. But this is mainly a hands-on, in-person job that requires administrators to be on site, so they can oversee operations and collaborate with healthcare providers.

It’s a great career for anyone who cares about delivering high-quality healthcare, is a natural leader, and can manage people and resources. Demand for healthcare professionals will likely continue to grow as our population ages and our healthcare industry becomes more complex and challenging to navigate. There are also tons of opportunities for advancement in the field that you can pursue.