Health Administration (MHA-GP)

This course has two overall goals. The first is to increase your effectiveness in understanding and managing individuals and teams in health care organizations. The course’s second goal is to prepare you to effectively design organizations. Effective managers not only must lead individuals and teams: they also must ensure that their organizations are well-designed to deliver the results that their strategies promise. This entails developing knowledge and skills to analyze key issues in organizational structure, power and politics, culture, and change.

This course builds students’ knowledge and skills to enable them to analyze key issues in the distribution of health and illness in society, the organization of the healthcare system, and the relationship of one to the other. We first consider the evolution of the U.S. healthcare system and the roles of health policy and management and public health in current debates. We then present an international perspective on the U.S. healthcare system, the role of stakeholders in the policymaking process and the roles of government in the health system. We conclude the introduction to this class with a glimpse into the future by focusing on the evolution of patient roles, demography and technology. In the second part of the course, we explore divergent perspectives for analyzing population health and health care: clinical; epidemiologic; sociological, geographic and cultural; economic; and ethical. We focus on social determinants of health, racial, ethnic and income disparities among population groups, and how health policymakers and managers can work collaboratively with leaders in housing, education, transportation, and other sectors to promote public health. In the third part, we consider selected issues in health policy and management and how the perspectives in the second part can shed light on them. We focus on the following issues: population health and the issues it raises about the social determinants of health and the health care system; quality of care and the debates about how to measure and assess it; the opioid epidemic; and the challenge of assuring access to healthcare services while simultaneously rationing them.

In this introductory course, students will learn the fundamentals of financial accounting and investment analysis. Financial accounting is a set of tools used by managers and external stakeholders for reporting on and analyzing an organization’s financial performance and position. Topics include debits and credits, the recording process, preparing and analyzing financial statements (balance sheet, operating statement, and cash flow statement), and specific topics of importance to health care organizations. Investment analysis forms the basis for capital budgeting and long-term financing - topics covered in additional courses. Topics include cash flow projections and analysis. Throughout all the course topics, computer spreadsheet skills are emphasized and demonstrated.

This course is an introduction to major health policy issues and examines the role of government in the health care system. An important focus of the course is an assessment of the role of policy analysis in the formation and implementation of national and local health policy. Because much of government health policy relates to or is implemented through payment systems, several sessions involve some discussion of the policy implications of how government pays for care, with a more detailed review of the economics of payment systems available in Introduction to Health Economics (MHA-GP 1853). The role of the legal system with respect to adverse medical outcomes, economic rights, and individual rights is also discussed. Proposals for health policy reform at the national and local level are examined throughout the course, as well as Medicare and Medicaid reforms currently being implemented or considered.

This course prepares students to become competent producers and consumers of data analyses and to use data-based evidence in managerial decision-making. We will emphasize understanding key principles in the meaning and use of statistical analyses, including developing understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of various methods. Topics include sampling, measures of central tendency and dispersion, hypothesis testing using parametric and non-parametric methods, correlation and multiple regression, and point and interval estimation. Students will use Microsoft Excel and other appropriate computer software to complete assignments.

This course incorporates topics of planning and financial decision making as applied to healthcare organizations. This course will cover two main topics: financial analysis both as a proactive exercise and a tool for organizational control and issues of budgeting, cost determination, pricing and rate setting in a healthcare environment.

The purpose of this course is to demonstrate how economists think about healthcare issues. The emphasis will be on looking at a wide variety of health policy and management topics from an economist's perspective. Students will develop their understanding of economic theory and empirical research in key areas of health economics and will learn to apply economic frameworks to timely issues in health management. Topics to be covered include the demand for health insurance and related problems of moral hazard and adverse selection; methods for paying health care providers and related problems of agency; economics of public health and issues of externalities and public goods; organization of firms in the health care sector and related issues of firm behavior and industrial organization, including issues of patent monopoly and technological development; and the economics of health policy, including taxation. The course will also address key policy issues considered in earlier courses—including the problems of healthcare costs and uninsurance—from an economic perspective. By the end of the course, students should have a sense of how to use economic theory and empirical analysis to evaluate healthcare policy and management issues. The course will build on data and communication skills developed in prior courses.

The course focuses on long-term financing, capital investment, and corporate finance as applied specifically to healthcare organizations. The course spends significant time incorporating risk into organizational decision-making. Students will learn and practice these skills through lectures, problem solving, and case studies. The course is structured to integrate both academic and practical approaches and perspectives on current healthcare financial issues.

This course encourages students to think creatively about what it means for a healthcare organization to make quality the highest priority. We will explore the current forces driving the push toward quality outcomes and accountability at all levels and settings of healthcare, while focusing on the philosophy of continuous improvement through teamwork and statistical thinking. Students will use structural tools for analysis, decision making and performance measurement.

Intensive introduction to the specific skills threaded through the Online MHA: building skills for effective communication, leadership and ethics, evidence-based management, and career development.

This end-event will afford students the opportunity to integrate the knowledge and skills acquired throughout the program and apply them to a particular problem in healthcare management. Students will practice their skills working on teams, thinking strategically, drawing on evidence, and making trade-offs under time pressure and constraints, all as required in the real world. This will be delivered via a strategic simulation that engages student teams in an experiential exercise. Students will need to define their organization’s mission and vision, decide which strategies to adopt, and enact them at an operations level. The problem will draw upon student learning in the program, entailing considerations of funding, budgeting, partnership, and stakeholder analysis. The technology provides students real-time feedback on processes and performance in the field. Objectives of this end event include getting up to speed quickly in an organization; honing process skills; analyzing data and making evidence-based decisions. Students will write an individual reflective paper about their experience in the simulation.

This course focuses on questions of mission and vision ("What areas or activities should we be working in?") and on questions of strategy and operations ("How can we perform effectively in this area?"). We will cover both strategy formulation ("What should our strategy be?") and strategy implementation ("What do we need to do to make this strategy work?"). All healthcare organizations face substantial challenges that demand strategic responses, often in uncertain economic, social, or political contexts. To deal effectively with these challenges, managers need knowledge and skills in strategic management: setting and aligning goals with the organization’s mission; handling complex trade-offs between demand for services and resource constraints; leading organizational change; defining measures of success; improving work processes; motivating staff and other stakeholders; cultivating relationships with diverse groups—often addressing issues of equity and inclusion; and dealing with crises and environments in transition. In short, the course emphasizes the multiple, related requirements of the work of managers: analysis, creativity, and action.

This course is for current and future healthcare innovators interested in learning how to exploit gaps and opportunities in the evolving healthcare industry and launch meaningful, valuable companies as measured by customers and investors. It provides innovators with the essential steps needed to take their idea from concept to reality. By using real cases to demonstrate the various paths taken by others, students will not only understand how to start up a company, but they will gain valuable insights into what it takes to succeed with investors, how to build a customer pipeline, and how to avoid pitfalls that can derail a company.

This course describes the growing involvement of government in stimulating and directing the development of information technology in healthcare organizations. Included is a discussion of attempts to exchange information for the purposes of improving the quality of personal healthcare and public health. Methods for determining the financial value of information technology are described. Techniques for ensuring the security and privacy of health information are presented.

This course is designed to study the essential role of human resources management within healthcare organizations. To meet the challenges of the marketplace, organizations will need to improve the quality of the services they provide; streamline their clinical delivery and support systems, and transform their human resources management accordingly. The degree to which organizations manage the people issues will, to a great extent, determine the success of our healthcare institutions. This course serves as a comprehensive foundation for all aspects of human resources planning, development, and management, including issues of equity, diversity and inclusion, and is vital to both the human resources professional and the line manager. Through the text readings, journal articles, case analyses, and student presentations, we will explore key issues and concerns in the human resources field.

This course explores the legal, policy and ethical issues encountered by healthcare professionals in the evolving healthcare system. Topics include government regulation of healthcare providers, patient consent to and refusal of treatment, human reproduction issues, privacy and confidentiality, tax-exemption, antitrust, fraud and abuse, mental health issues and health information management. Students will gain the ability to analyze legal and ethical healthcare resources by engaging in interactive discussions and informative research.

A healthcare organization’s brand can help it raise money, create change, and recruit participants as it effectively communicates its mission. But a brand is more than just a logo or a memorized elevator pitch, it is the way both internal and external audiences perceive your organization—and shaping this perception is as essential to the success of healthcare organizations. This course will offer an overview of branding and communications concepts, helping students approach branding in a way that builds commitment to their organization’s mission, increases trust, creates ambassadors, and strengthens impact. Students will gain a basic familiarity with a variety of branding principles and develop strategic communication recommendations for the healthcare organization where they work.

This course will examine recent developments in health policy from strategic, economic, and political lenses. The course has three objectives: to enable students to keep pace with key changes in the healthcare field; to promote students’ ability to analyze, and form policy and organizational responses, to new developments; and to promote students’ ability to integrate material from prior courses. Students will apply frameworks and skills developed in earlier courses to assess the forces driving these developments in health policy and to develop strategies for health care organizations to respond to these new developments. Each week of the course will address a broad area of health policy, such as cost containment, vertical and horizontal integration, quality improvement, technological innovation, health professionals, insurance coverage and managed care.

Operations management specifically involves the analysis, design, operation, and improvement of the systems and processes that deliver goods or services and ultimately outputs and outcomes. It is required to achieve the organization’s mission, provide value to the organization’s many stakeholders, and effectively translate policy into action. As such, operations management plays an important part of being an effective manager and policy implementer. In this course, we will develop a lens to perceive processes and systems in a variety of contexts along with an analytical toolbox to examine and understand these. Students will learn how to build basic operations models in Excel to make effective, evidence-based managerial, design, and policy decisions as well as gain defined analytical skills that lend themselves to roles in operations, management, hospital management, policy implementation, human services, consulting, and much more.

This hands-on introductory course designed for data visualization beginners will teach students how to develop meaningful data stories that reveal visual insights accessible for relevant audiences. Students will also learn the basics of Tableau, the industry-standard in data visualization tools, to make sense of and visualize publicly available data. Students will leave the course with the fundamental data visualization and storytelling knowledge and skills that can be applied to make data-driven decisions in healthcare as well help them be better consumers of data in their daily lives.

This course will equip students with the knowledge to lead analytical projects in healthcare organizations. It focuses on the role that analytics and machine learning play in different healthcare settings. Students will learn to employ precision questioning frameworks; read, clean, and interpret data; analyze data for patterns and relationships; and define appropriate measurement criteria and key performance indicators. Students will practice these skills through online lectures, problem-solving, and case studies. The course integrates both academic and practical approaches while offering perspectives on current healthcare issues.