Online Master of Healthcare Administration: Curriculum

Examines the history and current functions of urban and rural healthcare delivery systems in the United States. Focus is on the components, interaction, challenges, and internal/external controls.

Employing real clinical environment scenarios, this course presents the ethical and legal challenges, and implications that healthcare administration personnel face. Focus is on the issues surrounding legal precedence and ethical dilemmas arising healthcare environments.

Real-life applications of informatics and its implications for healthcare professionals competing in a complex healthcare environment. Key issues include healthcare standards and the impact on clinical decision making to help organizations drive down cost and improve the quality of healthcare delivery. 

This course will provide students with practical financial management information that will help assist them with healthcare financial management knowledge and a better understanding of healthcare finance to include the role of IDC-10, commercial insurance payers, and public insurance payers. This course shall explore advance principles in healthcare financial management that cover acute care and ambulatory care environments. In addition, this course will provide students with the essential concepts of healthcare finance forecasting and strategic managerial budgeting.

Focus is on planning, managing, and implementing effective healthcare quality improvement programs. Topics include quality measurement, quality reform, and the impact of patient/customer impact of effectiveness. Applying that understanding, the emphasis will be on selecting and defining indicators and metrics for data collection, analysis and reporting in various reporting platforms that track progress toward continuous system and patient care improvements. 

Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of diseases, health conditions, or events among populations and the application of that study to control health problems. By understanding and analyzing the distribution and determinants of diseases, health conditions, or events among populations, the focus is on examining the impact of infectious epidemics, types of epidemics and outbreaks on healthcare operations.  

Provides an essential understanding of how health policy and laws are formulated, enacted, implemented, and enforced. The broad and changing context of national and state policy and laws can differentially impact healthcare and public health systems and decisions related to operations and patient care for urban and rural enterprises. Such dynamics contribute to development and effectiveness of healthcare policy and planning. 

Considered early on to be convoluted, expensive, and dissatisfying to consumers, disruptive technology is gradually changing the face of healthcare as we know it. Innovation is at the forefront of the challenges facing healthcare leaders and leaders need to be continually evaluating emerging technologies in light of their impact on consumers and on the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare operations. 

The MHA capstone course will explore what it takes to manage a successful healthcare enterprise in today’s global environment. Emphasis is placed on strategic decision making in a healthcare simulation with the integrated application of core concepts acquired in the MHA program. Students will analyze the effects of their decisions within and between functional areas of a healthcare enterprise and on overall performance. By regularly analyzing data, considering strategies and ethics, and reviewing iterative outcomes, students can improve the impact of their decisions allow them to apply healthcare knowledge and skills in a unique and innovative fashion. 

Explores techniques and practices to effectively recruit, select, develop and manage business and healthcare professionals. After examining employment law, employee relations, and credentialing of healthcare providers, the focus is on developing practical strategies for staff recruitment, selection, retention practices, and performance management to meet the unique challenges in today’s for profit and nonprofit businesses. This course is cross-listed with HCA 513 and the MHA and MBA programs.

This course examines the influences that individual and group attitudes and behavior, organizational structure, history and culture have on enterprise performance. The multi-dimensional nature of the course draws from several interconnected fields including psychology, sociology, management, communications and ethics. Examples of focus are organizational values and culture, conflict, power, diversity and need for continuous adaptation due to global environmental influences. The course enables the enterprise leader to evaluate and manage the composition of the business’s structure to maximize human and organizational resources.

This course provides a framework for financial management techniques in the business world. Topics covered include planning the financial structure of the firm, management of firm assets, preparing the firm’s capital budget, management and acquisition of capital resources, and management of income. The focus is on practical tools for internal financial decision making.

Students will learn to use the tools and techniques associated with modern business strategy to create sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, students will discuss and master the fundamentals of modern competitive strategy; learn to assess the opportunities and threats present in the external environment; identify the strengths, weaknesses, and core competencies within any organization; and then create a pro-active strategic plan that capitalized on these factors.

An operations strategy refers to a set of operational decisions that an enterprise makes to achieve a long-term competitive advantage. The operations strategy supports the overall organizational strategy by ensuring the physical assets and organizational resources, including technology, personnel, facilities, processes, logistics and other related capital, are aligned with the direction set out in the organizational strategy. Achieving the operations strategy is primarily accomplished by maximizing the effectiveness of production and support elements, minimizing costs, and delivering value, both within the firm and across the network of suppliers and customers.

Diversity is about understanding each other and moving beyond simple tolerance to embracing the richness of diversity contained within each individual. A workplace’s success depends upon its ability to embrace diversity and realize the benefits of workforce diversity. Mutual and unique challenges exist when attempting to create a diverse equitable and inclusive workplace environment in urban and rural areas. Examining such challenges will enable rural and urban workplaces to develop strategies and goals that will meet the specific needs of the organization and achieve long-term success. This course is cross-listed with HCA 512 and the MHA and MBA programs.