Health Administration - Courses

This course explores the development of adults as learners and introduces students to the mental, physical, and psychological stages of adult development and how those changes affect the adult learning process. As students analyze adult learning theories, they will reflect on their own life experiences and review their strengths and motivations as adult learners. Students will have an opportunity to reflect, think critically, develop effective presentation skills, and prepare written responses to readings in the field of adult learning and adult development. Students will begin to understand themselves as learners: how they learn, what stages and triggers have affected their learning process, and how to value and incorporate life experiences into the continuing process of lifelong learning. The course launches the student’s journey through their accelerated degree-completion program.

A strong emphasis is placed on the review and practice of writing skills in the context of the class content. Through multiple writing assignments, students will learn the expectations for academic writing at the upper college level, including generating ideas, organizing written material, and improving self-editing skills. They will learn to balance and manage time while in an accelerated degree program.

This course explores the many facets of leadership, as distinct from management. In most organizations, leadership is more than giving orders and controlling employees and processes. Leadership is about people. Students will identify strengths and areas for improvement in effective communication, emotional intelligence, conflict management, and motivational styles. They will identify the effectiveness of various leadership styles, including the value of servant leadership, as they pertain to different organizational settings. The impact of diversity and multiple generations in the workplace will be viewed in the development of effective relationships and the creation of a productive work environment.

Organizational Behavior is a study of group behavior and how group functioning affects organizational effectiveness with attention given to issues of diversity, conflict, decision-making, innovation, leadership, and individual motivation. Special consideration is given to teams within organizations. Adult learners develop strategies for efficient and productive group participation/facilitation and determine which tasks groups or individuals best handle.

As pointed out in the main text of the class (Financial Intelligence: A Manager’s Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean by Karen Berman and Joe Knight), there are four skill sets to having financial intelligence:

(1) Understanding the Foundation;

(2) Understanding the Art;

(3) Understanding the Analysis; and

(4) Understanding the Big Picture (in other words being able to “step away from the numbers,” consider all relevant information, conduct analysis, and make effective decisions).

To accomplish this is no small task as the discipline is demanding due to a language barrier, volume of information, analytical tools/skills needed to support comprehension, and the typical adult learner’s lack of familiarity with the subject matter. However, those are also the reasons why it is so important. The overall goals of the course are to help adult learners understand and speak the language of accounting/finance, use the information and tools presented in the course to ask better questions, and ultimately to help themselves or others make better decisions which will help their organizations achieve their goals.

Topics include: Accounting-The Language of Business, Introduction to Financial Statements and Reporting, Importance of Cash Flows, Understanding Cost Behavior, Budgeting Systems and Developing Forecasts, Performance Measurement, and an Introduction to Capital Budgeting and Working Capital Management.

Health Care Systems and Organizations introduces the history and evolution of our health care system and provides an intensive analysis of interrelationships among and a general overview of health care environments, consumers, providers, organizational arrangements and regulatory, reimbursement and market mechanisms.  The structure and function of health care organizations, internally and with one another, is examined in depth. A systems approach to administration and management is covered within the health care context.  The organization of health services is reviewed with an overview of the interaction among, the integration of, the major health care subsystems: primary; secondary; tertiary; long-term; palliative; special populations/disorders.  Delivering health care in a systematic and integrated framework is stressed throughout the course

This course will assist students to better understand their own values and the relationship of those values to professional activities. Ethical decision-making will be explored through analysis of everyday dilemmas that occur within health care delivery. This course focuses on ethical decision-making, especially in the health care setting in which you function. It is not being assumed that you are not ethical or have not thought seriously before about how you make ethical decisions. What is being assumed, rather, is that all of us can benefit by taking time to reconsider our approach to ethical issues in a conscious, systematic manner.

This course covers the current state of the health insurance industry and reimbursement for services in the United States. The status of managed care and its continuing evolution is examined in depth. Private and public reimbursement structures and functions are studied in detail as well as application of reimbursement processes.

This course provides an overview of the field of operations management in the health and human services arena and establishes a foundation and common vocabulary for future course work. It emphasizes the health care supply chain, risk and cost management, resource allocation and utilization and process management. The course assumes adult learners have limited academic knowledge of operations management theory, and little or no experience in real world management situations to bring into the classroom. In each session the class explores some aspects of management in theoretical terms and then focuses on application of the theory to the practical problems facing managers in health and human services organizations.

The applied research module requires adult learners to select a problem they have encountered at work or in the community, conduct research to determine its cause(s), and make practical recommendations to solve the problem based on the study results.  Research undertakings intend to provide solutions to concrete problems, questions, or concerns within an organization or community; the research project enables adult learners to apply the acquired academic skills and knowledge across the healthcare curriculum.  Therefore, the research project’s value depends on its applicability to ongoing/active health organizational management concerns.  The project is team-based, enabling adult learners to gain a foundational understanding of the research process through a collaborative effort with their academic project advisor, workplace site contact person, and classmates.

The first few weeks of this research course lay the research study’s framework or inquiry by introducing the research process, developing the research question,  creating the problem and background statements, the literature review, data collection and analysis, and research report. The final project report is presented as a comprehensive written, oral, and graphical report.

This course provides an introduction to selected important topics in biostatistical concepts and reasoning. This course represents an introduction to the field and provides a survey of data and data types. Specific topics include tools for describing central tendency and variability in data; methods for performing inference on population means and proportions via sample data, statistical hypothesis testing and its application to group comparisons; issues of power and sample size in study designs; and random sample and other study types. While there are some formulae and computational elements to the course, the emphasis is on interpretation and concepts.

The applied research module requires adult learners to select a problem they have encountered at work or elsewhere, conduct research to determine its cause(s), and make practical recommendations to solve the problem based on the results of the study. Intended to provide solutions to concrete problems, questions, or concerns within an organization, the research project enables adult learners to apply the academic skills and knowledge acquired across the healthcare curriculum. The value of the research project, therefore, depends on its applicability to real management or organizational concerns. While the project is individual, adult learners gain a basic understanding of the applied research process through collaborative work with their academic Project Advisor, Workplace Site Contact person, and classmates. In Part Two the student will collect and analyze data and present both written and oral reports.

Constant changes to the environmental conditions experienced by modern organizations and their members present daunting challenges to every facet of the marketplace. Traditional textbooks cannot keep pace with the ever-changing complexity of our current healthcare environment. This course intends to:

1. Broadly review the history of healthcare and reform in the United States
2. Introduce the data and technology-driven enterprise of modern healthcare marketing
3. Engage and emerge the learner into the concerns of modern-day healthcare systems and organizations
4. Introduce healthcare marketing, the nature of marketing strategy, and the environment in which marketing operates

This course will emphasize healthcare organizations' response(s) to the changing demographics of an aging population and staying 'on trend' with the current and ever-evolving healthcare concerns.