Master of Healthcare Administration (MHA)

In this course, students gain contemporary knowledge of financial and economic principles such as efficiency and value as it relates to health care. The principles of health care financial management, including accounting and finance, are vitally important to the viability and ongoing operations of a healthcare entity. Students have the opportunity to interpret and analyze the financial statements, use and analyze financial ratios, utilize variance analysis, understand and implement operating and capital budgeting, and develop knowledge of the business planning process. Students create portions of a business/financial plan and assess the viability of their plan using accepted financial management tools.

The challenges of the changing healthcare environment from a volume-based to a value-based focus require healthcare administrators to examine forces that affect organization business and operational performance and patient care outcomes. In this course, students examine the forces and trends that affect performance outcomes within healthcare organizations and analyze how high reliability healthcare organizations model and implement sustainable operations management practices. Students assess and apply how changes in healthcare organization structure, logistics, and supply chains can result in positive patient care outcomes and explore evidence-based management practice models to promote and implement performance excellence standards in various healthcare settings.

The rapidly evolving health care system presents the health care administrator with complex challenges and risks. Health care administrators must possess the skills needed to assess federal, state, and local health care policies that frame the delivery of health care services. In this course, students assess and discuss key legal and ethical initiatives from diverse perspectives. Course work focuses on required knowledge of health care laws, policies, and regulations enacted by policymakers and regulatory agencies that impact health care. This also includes comprehensive health care reform issues impacting and influencing the role of the health care administrator. To help frame these concepts, students examine and analyze the ethical underpinnings and principles that health care organizations and administrators observe and follow in the delivery of services to patients.

Students in this course are introduced to the basis for quality and patient safety and are provided an overview of healthcare quality, methods of assessing quality, and techniques for improving quality. They can learn key terminology and concepts, including defining quality care; measuring quality in terms of the structure-process-outcomes model; distinguishing between clinical and customer service quality; identifying techniques to avoid adverse clinical events; and exploring customer service quality in terms of defining, measuring, and improving patient satisfaction. Students also explore and discuss the roles of governmental agencies in promoting and reporting quality information regarding hospitals and other health organizations, accrediting bodies, and recent performance initiatives of government and private payers. They apply course concepts to current issues of improving clinical and service quality in healthcare organizations, with special consideration of the 5 Million Lives Campaign—a national effort initiated by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement designed to improve medical care in the United States.

In this course, students investigate and analyze the changing landscape of the health care environment and the factors affecting leadership in health care administration. Students consider stakeholders in a variety of settings to establish a framework for scholarly investigation of effective strategies for healthcare administrators in practice. Particular emphasis will include the importance of collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and diversity. Strategies include professional leadership behaviors that enable effective positive social change, such as setting goals and managing time, as well as the attitudes and motivation required for success as a healthcare manager, administrator, and leader. Students create an individualized professional development plan and develop the core competencies needed for success within an online learning environment.