Healthcare Management vs Healthcare Administration: One Field With Two Names

Read a few articles on healthcare management vs healthcare administration and you will find the same answer: management is the big picture, administration is the daily running of a department. Many of those articles are published by universities with one of these degrees to sell. It is a tidy distinction, and it is hard to find in the records that define the field.

So we checked those records, then compared what schools call their degrees with what those degrees cost and how their institutions graduate students.

The Government Files Both Words Under One Title

Every college program in the federal data carries a code from the Classification of Instructional Programs. The main code for this degree is 51.0701, and its title is "Health/Health Care Administration/Management." The slash is doing the work there. Its definition covers programs that prepare people "to develop, plan, and manage health care operations and services," which puts daily operations and planning in one sentence.

The second code in this field, 51.0702, is titled "Hospital and Health Care Facilities Administration/Management." It does draw a line, but the line is about the setting, hospitals and other facilities, and it uses both words again.

The job works the same way. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has one occupation, Medical and Health Services Managers, and says those workers are "also called healthcare executives or healthcare administrators." It counts 597,080 of them and reports one median wage of $123,860 as of May 2025. You may read that one of these paths pays more than the other, but the federal wage survey has one figure for both.

What Schools Call the Degree

The federal records do not hold a program's own name, so this site reads it from each school's page. 337 of the 368 ranked bachelor's programs have a name verified that way, and schools split on the word: 56% use administration and 38% use management. Another 6 use both, and 14 use neither, with names built on health services or leadership instead.

Two things stand out. Both names appear under both federal codes, so the facilities code is not where one word goes and the other does not. And the price and graduation figures sit close together. Graduation rates in this table describe the whole institution, and tuition is the school's published undergraduate rate, so neither one measures the degree's name. They are here to show that the word does not sort programs into a cheaper tier or a higher-finishing one.

The largest gap is in volume. Administration-named programs award 8,275 degrees a year and management-named programs 3,202. Much of that comes from size at the top: the 7 largest programs with a verified name all use administration.

Where a Real Difference Shows Up

The word is a weak signal, but there are real differences between programs. These are the ones worth your time.

• The department. 13% of management-named programs carry business in the name, such as a BBA, against 5% of administration-named ones. That is a small tilt, and most programs in both groups do not. Check where the degree is taught, because a business school and a health school will spend your electives differently.
• The course list. The federal definition lists planning, business and financial management, human resources, resource allocation and policy, and health law. Check how much of each a program requires, and whether its name matches what you read there.
• The setting. If you want to run a hospital unit, a physician practice or a long-term care facility, look for courses and internships in that setting. A medical practice manager and a hospital administrator do different work, and those are the differences the job titles point at.
• Licensing. The word carries legal weight in one place. Nursing home administrators answer to state licensing rules, so read your state's rules first if that is the goal. Which credentials are required covers the rest.
• Accreditation at the right level. AUPHA certification applies to undergraduate programs and CAHME accreditation to master's programs. Their full names, the Association of University Programs in Health Administration and the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education, use the two words as well. See what each one means.

Healthcare Management vs Healthcare Administration: How to Choose

Start by treating healthcare management and healthcare administration as the same search. If you filter a list down to one word, you will miss programs that could suit you, and more than a third of the programs named here use the other word.

Then compare the things that do change your degree: the required courses, the internship, the cost and whether students finish. The program rankings show the federal figures for each one and the name each school uses. If you are looking at graduate study, a similar question comes up as MHA vs MBA, where the accreditation follows the program rather than the letters.