Administrative fellowships, in which healthcare management graduates have the opportunity to gain career experience at participating organizations, are gradually regaining ground.
“Forty to 50 years ago, when you had 90% of hospitals as independent organizations, administrative fellowships were the pathway to … the C-suite,” said Anthony Stanowski, president and CEO of the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education.
Now only about 9% of recent graduates enter fellowships, usually at a hospital or health system, he said. The rest tend to take full-time jobs with healthcare organizations, consulting firms or insurance companies.
But the number of available fellowship positions has grown in recent years. There were 207 fellowship positions available to 2021-22 graduates, according to National Center for Healthcare Leadership data, compared with 165 available to the 2017-18 cohort.
Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, Stanowski said some programs worked to offer graduates specialized options. For instance, he cited a Missouri degree program that connected students with government organizations looking for assistance in interpreting COVID-related data.