Curriculum
The Healthcare MBA program consists of 52.5 credit hours: 23 core classes and 12 elective classes. Each module has three classes and lasts seven weeks. Each class within the module is worth 1.5 credits. The online program is a tightly structured and can be completed in two years.
Core Classes
Financial Accounting I
This course is an introduction to the three basic financial accounting statements. Because this is an introductory course, students will obtain a basic understanding of business transactions and the fundamentals of accounting processes. However, primary emphasis will be placed upon understanding the content and context of the financial reports.
Financial Accounting II
This course discusses firms' detailed accounting procedures and choices. At the end of the class, students will understand how the most important accounting procedures are calculated as well as how different choices impact financial statements.
Managerial Accounting
Managerial accounting is concerned with the internal generation, communication, and interpretation of information for both operational and strategic decision-making purposes. Note also that information is relevant for two types of internal decision-making: operational decision-making and strategic decision-making.
Judgment, Uncertainty, and Decisions
This course provides an introduction to judgment and uncertainty in managerial decision-making. Classical theories of decision-making are discussed along with more recent findings on human cognitive limitations/biases. Students will learn analytical approaches that are useful in cases involving uncertainty, multiple objectives, and multiple stakeholders.
Data Analysis and Decisions
This course deals with the rigorous treatment of statistical analysis: what is it, how it is used, when it should be used, and what we learn from it. Concepts include statistical inference, hypothesis testing, and regression analysis. The use of statistics in management decision-making is emphasized.
Operations Strategy
This course introduces the concepts and techniques related to manufacturing and service operations. This course is comprised of diverse activities such as process mapping, capacity analysis, production control, quality management, and an introduction to supply chains. Students will learn that integrating operations with a firm's overall business strategy serves as a powerful, competitive weapon.
Financial Markets
This course is the first module of two finance classes required for MBA students. It may not be used to satisfy a second-level requirement. Financial markets are introduced to include sources of managerial information provided by money and capital markets, primary and secondary markets, and cash and future's markets.
Financial Management
This course is the second finance module of two required for MBA students. It may not be used to satisfy a second-level requirement. Theory, policy, and practice in financial management are emphasized. Financial analysis, sources of funds, investing, capital planning and budgeting, dividend policy, and working capital management are also covered.
Global Perspectives
This course is designed to introduce a global perspective to the MBA program. The focus is on identifying differences between the domestic US environment and the international environment as well as their implications for management and differences in the organization of institutions of capitalism across countries.
Microeconomics for the Global Economy
This course applies the tools of microeconomics to business decisions. The economics of supply and demand in product markets is at the core of the analysis. The course focuses predominantly on the theory of the firm (production and cost structure) and its competitive environment (perfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly, and monopolistic competition), rather than on consumer behavior.
Macroeconomics for the Global Economy
This course provides insight into how firms are affected by the performance of the macro economy and what macroeconomic variables should be factored into managers' decision-making processes. Emphasis is placed on studying the behavior of output, employment, interest rates, inflation, and exchange rates.
International Management
This course leverages the foundation built in the Global Perspectives course to explore topics such as the challenges of operating in different cultures, the implications of cross-national differences in institutional environments on firm operations, and the difficulties of designing effective organizational structures for coordination and control in multinational operations.
Management of Information Systems
This course provides an introduction to bridging the gap between top management and technicians in organizations as well as understanding both the decision-making needs of managers and the terminology of techies in order to allow for intelligent communication with both groups. Students will be introduced to information technology and the use of this technology in modern digital organizations – the shift of organizations to the digital economy.
Organizations and Leadership
Organizations and Leadership provides an introduction to organizations from a behavioral perspective. The course covers core leadership concepts at the individual, team, and organizational level. The course requires students to apply these concepts to examine their own leadership qualities through engagement in experiential exercises, completion of self-assessments, and participation in team projects.
Managing Human Capital
This course builds students' knowledge and awareness of the issues involved in managing people by providing exercises, cases, and discussion around human capital management. The class will involve students in weekly case discussions and structured exercises designed to illustrate, diagnose, and evaluate various human capital problems and issues, appropriate tools, and effective interventions.
Entrepreneurship
This course will explore and examine the "entrepreneur as a phenomenon." In exploring the entrepreneur, students will be exposed to the theory as well as the experiences associated with entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial acts, and entrepreneurship in all organizational settings – large, small, public, and private. Emphasis will be placed on the integration of theories and concepts with personal experiences.
The Nature of Markets
This course will demonstrate that marketing is an organizational function as well as a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.
Marketing Decisions
The focus of this course is the formulation and implementation of marketing strategy. In particular, this course seeks to help you apply analytic perspectives, decision tools, and concepts of marketing to the following elements of marketing strategy, known as the 'marketing mix' or the '4 P's'.
Ethics
Managerial implications of ethical issues in health services delivery: administrative and institutional ethics; professional codes; conflicts of interest, impaired professionals, end-of-life decisions, experimentation, and new technology; resource allocation.
Business and Public Policy
This course examines the theory and practice of managing organizations in the context of a rapidly changing global environment. It focuses on the structure, design, and operation of organizations as interrelated systems and on the integration of internal and external environments.
Healthcare Policy Analysis
This course addresses public policy and politics, that is, how different people and groups decide what they want and then go about getting it. To understand policies, you need to have knowledge of issues; and to understand politics, you need an understanding of process. We will spend time on both.
Business Law and Communication
An examination of the legal environment of business, with particular attention to the liability of organizations and their managers for contracts, torts, and crimes. Students learn strategies for avoiding legal nightmares and also develop their communication skills through assignments that require clear, concise, and accurate writing.
Business Strategy
An integrative approach to strategic management, stressing the general manager's perspective, strategy formulation, implementation of strategy and policy, and evaluation and control of strategy in various types of organizations. This is designed as a capstone course to be taken after completion of all core requirements.
Elective Classes
The following is a partial list of electives. Classes are subject to change.
Management of the Acute Care Hospital
Organizing and managing acute care hospitals. Relationships and procedures of clinical, support, and administrative departments. Process analyses and applications of the Deming method of continuous quality improvement. Requirements of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
Physician Practice Management
Theory and principles of practice management. Emphasis on the fundamentals of organizing, staffing, and controlling a physician practice. Financial applications and resource consumption.
Aging and Disability: Needs and Services
Problems of aging and disabilities including social, psychological, biological, economic, and health services needs. Theory and research explore attitudes and behaviors based on contact with older and/or disabled persons. Delivery of informal and social services to aged and disabled persons.
Managing the Skilled Nursing Facility
Organizing, financing, and managing the skilled nursing facility. Determining residents' needs and developing appropriate services. Accreditation Standards, government regulations, and licensing requirements.
Compliance and Risk Management in Health Services
Application of concepts and techniques for organizing and implementing compliance, risk management, and patient safety programs within the context of quality and performance improvement. Emphasis on organizational values as a condition to success. Recent compliance requirements will be addressed (e.g. HIPAA).
Supply Chain Management in Health Services
Theory and application of distribution management of materials, services, and information in health services organizations. Suppliers, inventory control, negotiating and managing contracts, joint and shared purchasing.
Service Line and Project Management
Theory and application of management science techniques to manage and improve effectiveness of service lines, programs, and projects in health services. Business case development, planning, project management tools, and program evaluation.
