Master of Health Administration – MHA

The course is intended to provide the Master of Health Administration (MHA) student and future manager with a systems perspective of US health and health care structure and function. As the introductory course in the MHA program, it is to provide the fundamentals for all courses that follow, including finance and economics, strategy, quality improvement, policy and law, and others. Topics include an overview of the history, organization, and effectiveness of United States health care and public health systems, health system governance structures, roles, responsibilities as well as determinants of health, need, access and utilization.

This course provides an introduction and overview to health care leadership, management and organizational behavior in health care settings reflecting the uniqueness of this sector as well as the universal concepts and principles utilized in the development of effective health care administrators and leaders. This course integrates theory with practice through readings, written assignments and discussion boards from different organizational perspectives. The development of leadership, managerial and organizational skills will be accomplished largely through individual work, with strong emphasis on self-reflection and self-analysis utilizing the particular tools of the course. This course aims to provide a relevant understanding of organizational dynamics such as performance, organizational culture, teamwork and individual and shared values and cultural competency. It will examine how health care leaders and their organizations relate to each other internally and to their external environments. Topics include values-driven leadership, team effectiveness, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, conflict management and assessment and evaluation of leadership performance. This course emphasizes the integration of the students’ past and current experiences with current reflections based on the current learning of leadership concepts and principles included in this course. The students will be required to submit their feedback from self-evaluation assignments, surveys and inventory tools that are intended to provide insight, awareness, professional and personal development during the course and assist with ongoing growth and development for each student in health care leadership roles into the future.

This course will provide an overview of global health problems and national health systems to provide the student with a perspective on how societies approach health and health care including cultural, economic and political factors. National systems from the developed and under-developed world will be examined and contrasted. In addition to national systems, the roles played by certain global/international systems such as the World Health Organization, certain UN agencies and NGOs will be explored. Students will also explore current issues including environmental impacts, immigrant health issues and travel medicine.

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

This course builds on the accounting and financial concepts introduced in FIN 7021. 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 non-profits. There are four main financial topic areas covered in the course: capital acquisition and structure, financial condition analysis and forecasting, Revenue cycle management and capital allocation. This course is the second of a two-course sequence in health care finance.

The goal of this course is use economic analysis to introduce and to understand the basic elements and dynamics of the US healthcare system with a particular emphasis on policy implications. Over the past 50 years, the size and scope of the US healthcare economy has grown considerably. In 1960, the US spent about 5% of its gross national product on health. We now spend $3.2 Trillion, or 18%+ of the gross national product on healthcare. This is not only double what it was twenty years ago, but is a per capita level far higher than other industrialized countries. The greater spending, however, does not seem to have purchased much better health. Why does the United States spend so remarkably on medical care for results that are not so remarkable? In seeking explanations and solutions, we will study the healthcare system in the United States and understand the factors that drive our appetite for healthcare goods and services. We will then examine alternatives to our current system, paying special attention to the ongoing legislative reform efforts coming from Washington DC.

This course follows ECON 7021 and introduces the principles, methods and concepts of three different aspects of strategic management as it relates to health care organizations: 1) strategic planning and management, 2) competitive positioning and 3) alliances, mergers and acquisitions. Methods of evaluating and analyzing the external environment will include discussions of regulatory control, consolidation of industries, disruptive technologies and crisis/prevention management. The interaction of forces inside the organization such as structure, governance, resource management and culture will be analyzed for their impact on the organization’s competitive position and strategic direction.

This course includes both theoretical models for health care quality work, as well as practical strategies for application and implementation of improvement initiatives in a health care setting. The course will review the Institute of Medicine’s Aims to drive safe, effective, efficient, timely, patient centered and equitable care. Students will learn various sources and categories of data that have proved useful in driving outcomes through quality improvement. It delineates the qualitative and quantitative quality improvement strategies employed by managers to engage in effective decision-making.

The quality of health care in the United States has garnered significant attention among health care professionals and the public. Health care quality is driven fundamentally by the leadership and management practices of health care organizations. This course will review approaches to building and sustaining a culture of performance excellence in health care organizations. It emphasizes the use of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Framework for designing, implementing, and improving organizational practices that influence health care quality. Topics include understanding patient and stakeholder needs, strategic and operations planning, workforce practices, measurement and analysis, leadership, organization assessment, and change management.

This course is designed to provide students with an overview of the structure, systems and policies of health care 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, health care professions, hospitals, long-term care, mental health, integrated health care systems, the Veterans Administration Health Systems, pharmaceuticals and technology. The course prepares learners to confront the underlying values and ethics that drive the politics of the health care 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, health care 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 health care, nondiscrimination, conflicts of interest and constitutional constraints on public health initiatives.

This course is the first of two half-semesters of the Master of Health Administration (MHA) Capstone course sequence.  It is intended to integrate the foundational courses provided throughout the MHA program to help the student begin the capstone process.  The goal of this course is to provide the student with the foundation needed to work toward developing the key competencies required for the creation of the health systems management capstone assignment in the final semester of the MHA Program.  The key competencies are:

• The ability to understand problems and issues as they emerge.

• The ability to mobilize coworkers to address these issues through clear professional communication.

• The ability to analyze an emergent issue and synthesize current peer-reviewed literature.

• The ability to create and consider best practice and evidence-based solutions to the emergent issue.

• The ability to foster and create collaborative relationships with internal and external mentors.

• The ability to seek information and apply analytical thinking skills through innovative thinking while developing the students’ self-confidence.

• The ability to create cost benefit analyses and financial support in order to solve an emergent issue.

• The ability to analyze federal, state, and local policies in application to resolve an emergent issue.

In this course, students demonstrate how the knowledge and skills learned in their Master of Health Administration Program can be integrated and applied to analyzing an emerging health systems management issue of their choosing. This course is offered in sequence with HCA 7081: Understanding Emerging Issues in Health Systems Management: Introduction to the Capstone. At the beginning of the 7081 course, students will identify an emerging issue in health systems management which will become the subject of the student’s required Capstone. The selected issue may arise from the student’s employment situation, from his/her educational interests, or from a list of potential emerging issues provided by the course director. During the 7081 course, the student will refine the question or proposition, construct a logic model for guiding analysis, identify existing sources of information to be employed in the analysis, and assemble and submit an abstract proposal. The abstract will represent the final deliverable for the 7081 course. Once it has been approved and graded, the student may then proceed with the Capstone literature review and analysis, and the submission of the Capstone paper by the required date. The student will engage in the following processes:

1. utilize the assignments from 7081 to write a literature review

2. analyze the identified literature and synthesize the findings

3. create implications and recommendations

4. utilize the expertise of the mentor to further enhance the quality of the paper

5. assemble and submit a publishable paper