Health Care Administration Graduate Certificate

This is the first in a series of two courses in Health Systems Management. The objective of this course is to provide the student with a systematic approach for examining and evaluating a healthcare system with special emphasis on selected components, features and tasks. The healthcare system in the United States is used to illustrate this descriptive, analytic and evaluative approach. The general approach, however, is designed to apply to other healthcare systems as well. The student can learn both the conceptual approaches and techniques needed to analyze the performance of a healthcare system and, at the same time, obtain a thorough understanding of the U.S. healthcare delivery system. The course is intended to provide the future health services administrator, planner, policy analyst or researcher with the fundamentals necessary to be able to anticipate how changes in one part of the healthcare delivery system are likely to affect its other components. Topics include an overview of the history, organization and effectiveness of the U.S. healthcare delivery and public health systems, health system governance structures and roles and responsibilities as well as the determinants of health, health status, need, access and utilization.

This is the first in a series of two courses covering the Economics of Healthcare. This course provides a broad overview of the field of health economics. The course examines how standard concepts and methods in economics can be used to understand health-related decisions made by individuals and firms, using the basic framework of economics to analyze the behavior of consumers, insurers, physicians and hospitals. It will also study the application of economics to healthcare policy, with a focus on how economic analysis can assist in the development of market and non-market solutions to various healthcare problems. The tools of economics are applied to both managerial issues, such as pricing decisions, and policy issues, such as the medically uninsured. Topics include economic analysis and application to decision-making as well as healthcare payment methods including Medicare’s payment systems for hospitals and physicians and risk-adjusted capitation payment systems.

This course provides an introduction and overview to leadership, management and organizational concepts and principles reflecting the uniqueness and the particular requirements of effective and successful healthcare leadership. The course integrates theory with practice through readings, lectures, written assignments and discussion board postings describing different organizational perspectives and experiences. The course aims to teach personal and professional assessment skills as well as practice skills and the development of leadership, managerial and organizational skills through an integration of course materials with application to the students’ own professional settings. The review, analysis and reflection of students’ own experiences, strengths, challenges and outcomes will be required during this learning process. This course aims to provide a relevant understanding of organizational dynamics, professional development, team development, team cohesiveness, strategic formulation, implementation, decision-making and negotiation. It also focuses on excellent written, verbal and interpersonal communications and their positive impact on effective leadership.

This course covers financial and managerial aspects of healthcare financial management. It provides a broad introduction to key concepts, issues, tools and vocabulary useful for administrators, managers and policymakers. There are three main topic areas covered in the course: financial accounting, finance and managerial accounting. The focus is on use, not the preparation of accounting information. Topics include financial analysis and management and methods as well as techniques for evaluating costs and cost-effectiveness of health, medical and pharmaceutical interventions. This course is the first of a two-course sequence in healthcare finance.

This course builds on the accounting and financial concepts introduced in FIN7021. The continued exploration of the healthcare environment includes an in-depth examination of third-party payer systems including managed care plus the legal and regulatory environment, particularly for nonprofit organizations. There are three main financial topic areas covered in the course: capital acquisition and structure, financial condition analysis and forecasting and capital allocation. This course is the second of a two-course sequence in healthcare finance.

This course builds upon ECON7021 and introduces the principles, methods and concepts of three different aspects of marketplace strategic management as it relates to healthcare organizations: 1) strategic planning and management, 2) marketing and 3) governance. The focus is not only on the processes of strategic planning and management, marketing and governance, but also on strategic learning and development. Methods for evaluating and analyzing the environment external to the organization will include discussions of transparency, disruptive technologies and crisis prevention/management. The interaction of forces inside the organization such as marketing, governance, corporate culture and resources will be analyzed for their impact on the organization and its strategic direction.

This course is designed to provide students with an overview of the structure, systems and policies of healthcare delivery in the United States. The major structural/system issues include the “big three” or “universal issues” i.e., access, quality and costs, which includes Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance. Other system topics include the uninsured, healthcare professions, hospitals, long-term care, mental health, integrated healthcare systems, the Veterans Administration Health Systems, pharmaceuticals and technology. The course aims to prepare learners to confront the underlying values and ethics that drive the politics of the healthcare system and to understand and apply basic concepts in policy analysis and advocacy in practice settings. Discussions and assignments will focus on the development of public policy concerning medical care and public health and the relationship between public decisions and the marketplace. Topics include health policy formulation, implementation and evaluation.

This course presents an introduction to the legal and ethical issues that arise in management of health services organizations. Topics include ethics in business and clinical decision-making, tools for understanding ethics and ethical analysis, professional and organizational guidelines in making ethical decisions, including codes of ethics and mission statements, organizational responses to ethical issues, including ethics processes, such as institutional ethics committees and institutional review boards, conflicts of commitment and conflicts of interest, patient and community concerns and end-of-life decisions. Additionally, the course will review legal principles development, application and assessment, and resource allocation and social responsibility. Other topics covered include liability, healthcare institutions as corporations, the nature and scope of public health authority, antitrust, fraud and abuse, privacy and confidentiality, tax implications, regulatory oversight, legal requirements for access to healthcare, nondiscrimination, conflicts of interest and constitutional constraints on public health initiatives.

This course will provide an overview of global health problems and national health systems to give the student a perspective on how societies approach health and healthcare including cultural, economic and political factors. National systems from the developed and under-developed world will be examined and contrasted, including those of England, Canada and Cuba. In addition to national systems, the roles played by certain global/international systems such as the World Health Organization, UN agencies and NGOs will be explored.

The course examines the study of health and disease in populations from a health management and analytical perspective. Topics include population health and status assessment, socio-cultural factors, epidemiological methods, study designs, statistical analysis and application, the interpretation of data, and the application of findings for managerial decision making. Statistical topics include descriptive statistics, probability, sampling, statistical distribution, estimation, hypotheses testing, chi-square tests and simple and multiple linear regression.

The quality of healthcare in the United States has garnered significant attention among healthcare professionals and the public. This course will review the current state of the quality of healthcare in the United States, approaches to assess quality of healthcare and strategies to improve the quality of care. These include the fundamentals of health program planning and evaluation with an emphasis on developing skills in formative, outcome, and impact data collection and analysis. This course emphasizes the use of the Baldrige Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence for designing, implementing and improving organizational frameworks for performance excellence. Topics include program or project management, operations assessment and improvement.

This course introduces the discipline of health informatics and covers emerging trends. Various information systems, technologies and applications utilized in the context of health and health care are introduced. Their characteristics, strengths, challenges, purpose and impact are taught. Impact on patients, populations and health care providers is emphasized. Factors influencing adoption and use of various clinical and health information systems and technologies are taught. Key information technologies and systems such as electronic health records, health information exchanges, personal health records, public health information systems and mobile health technologies are introduced in this course. Topics such as telemedicine, interoperability and technical concepts are taught and evaluation framework is applied.

The Lean system evolved as the Toyota Production System within the manufacturing sector. Today principles of Lean are being adopted in the Service Sector,especially in the healthcare organizations, with an eye towards improving efficiency without having a negative impact on patient experience. This course introduces the student to Lean techniques and offers them the opportunity to do a field case study inside a healthcare organization.