Doctor of Health Administration (EdD)

This course reviews and critically analyzes components of research design, including collection of data. Emphasis is placedon the professional as producer and consumer of research.

Prerequisites: None

This course brings together students with a wide range of backgrounds and experiences as consumers, providers within health care organizations and policy makers to critically examine the organizational and management concepts that influence planning and decision making. The emphasis is on studying the various forms of health organizations as well as administrative behaviors used in adaptation and policy development.

Prerequisites: None

The course will present the design of programs for the maximizing of employees and institutional contributions in the health care service area. The course will address the grouping of professionals,paraprofessionals and skilled and non-skilled workers into an efficient and effective work group. The course will review labor relations and union organizations in the health care area and review legal aspects of personnel management.

Prerequisites: None

This course is designed to introduce the learner to a broad range of concepts and skills involved in planning, budgeting and controlling in health care organizations. The emphasis in this course is on managerial as opposed to financial accounting and on issues carried out at the department or organizational level rather than the system level. This course is required for the long-term care certificate.

Prerequisites: None

This course builds on previous HSA core courses to prepare the learner to help position and financially manage a health care organization. Application of concepts of financial management within health care organizations, including financial planning principles, reimbursement procedures, government regulations, analysis of financial statements and principles of financial planning. The strategic planning process and principles of marketing are covered. Emphasis is placed on issues related to integrated health systems and managing the health of populations.
Offered in: Spring Only
Prerequisites: HSA-648 HSA-652 HSA-653

This course introduces the learner to descriptive and exploratory health care economics including the operation of health care markets, supply and demand issues in health care, market competition, market power, and reform in the health care market. The public policymaking process in the United States will be explored on a national and state level, along with health policy reform, current significant policy issues, development of the U.S. health care system, and comparison with health care systems in other industrialized countries. Participants in the course track and analyze public policy issues and explore major health policy references and sites.

Prerequisites: None

This course addresses legal and ethical issues frequently encountered by health care managers. Topics include the constitutional basis for government support of health care services and constraints that law and regulation impose on the health care industry. Bioethical theory, policy formulation and decision making in the professional setting are also included. Specific problems discussed include such issues as the right to health care, allocation of scarce resources, human experimentation, choices regarding death, liability of health care providers and governing board and medical and health care staff responsibilities.

Prerequisites: None

This course examines a variety of advanced quantitative methods useful for analyzing and evaluating decision making in health care systems. It is designed to improve the learners ability to use analytical techniques now seen as necessary for formulating strategic or operative plans for a health care organization.

Prerequisites: DHA-669

The course has an emphasis on the application and interpretation of statistical tests commonly employed in epidemiologic and health services research. This course will emphasize statistical concepts and the application of statistical methods to test hypothesis in data sets. Topics include descriptive statistics, probability distributions,point and confidence interval estimation, hypothesis testing for means,proportions, elementary non-parametric techniques, tests for categorical data,ANOVA,correlations and introduction to regression methods. Students will be introduced to SPSS in weekly laboratory sessions to learn how to import and manipulate data sets and perform data analysis using statistical methods covered in the course.

Prerequisites: None

This course is designed specifically for managers in health care organizations who want to develop knowledge and skills in planning, measurement and communicating the performance of their organization. This course is targeted to those students who desire a master’s degree in health services administration and have achieved the level of knowledge and skill associated with understanding the structure and function of health care systems as well as basics in measurement as applied to planning, budgeting and controlling within organizations. Students will learn how to respond to the convergence of forces driving the study of the performance of health care systems today. The emphasis is on how to assess the performance of processes and outcomes of health care delivery systems and what to assess.Students will learn how to design, implement and evaluate the performance of their organization as well as how to contribute to and use uniform datasets.
Offered in: Fall Only
Prerequisites: HSA-648

Epidemiology is the student of the distribution and determinants of disease in human populations. Managerial epidemiology is the application of the principles and tools of epidemiology to the practice of management. This course will introduce students to the basic principles of epidemiology and demonstrate how these principles may be applied to the various functions of health services administrators/managers, such as planning, staffing, organizing, directing and controlling. Through these principles students will learn how measurement of health-related outcomes and delivery of health services is a critical component of each of these functions.

Prerequisites: None

Policymaking has a profound effect on all aspects of health care delivery from the invention and marketing of new health modalities to insuring individuals against catastrophic loss. Indeed,all the major stakeholders in the health care system have an interest in sound health care decisions at all levels. This course will explore the relationship of technology, business and government in the creation and implementation of sound policies that address unmet medical needs and promote the public good. Through the liberal use of case studies, the student will be exposed to international policies and policy making and the impact that process has on individual health.

Prerequisites: None

This course examines problems and strategies of communications in the many environments that surround and affect health services institutions. It is designed to assess communications processes; determine problems, successes and failures in communications; and improve one’s ability to communicate in both individual and organizational settings. It emphasizes the use of cases, incident processes and survey methodologies to analyze and improve institutional communications.

Prerequisites: None

This course examines a set of legal problems and policy issues that are common to the human services of medicine and education. Among the topics are the rights of the client and the provider, the right of the patient to refuse life-saving care, informed consent, the rights of the mentally ill, regulating access to treatment, malpractice, the right to health care and education, inequalities in the provision of health and education services and the social imperatives for ameliorating our system of human services.

Prerequisites: None

This course provides an in depth review of the use of information technology in health care. The course will consider how information systems have developed to support the business and clinical requirements of the health care delivery system. Most important, the course will assess reasons for recent expansion in health information technology and consider the potential impact of this with an emphasis on both the cost and quality of health care services.

Prerequisites: None

Topics covered are epidemiological studies of health problems that have been influential in the formation of health care policy, the ideological and political uses to which such data are put, and discussions of emerging health problems. Health Policy and Politics are examined in contemporary terms and in context with the health of the peoples involved.

Prerequisites: None

This course provides an in-depth coverage of the quantitative and qualitative issues associated with population-based epidemiological research. Topics include issues in study design, measurement, methods of data collection, risk assessment, confounding variables and analytic techniques. Applications of these methods to determine client care are stressed in terms of institutional goals. Consideration will be given to the incidence and economics of major health impairments.

Prerequisites: None

This course will introduce students to the design of scientific inquiry as exhibited through scientific publication and grant writing. In the first half of the course students will learn to critically evaluate the medical literature with respect to study design, statistical analysis, and interpretation of results. The program is designed to prepare the participant for independence in accessing health care delivery and population health literature and evaluate the quality of published and peer reviewed journal articles.

Prerequisites: None

This course reviews the diverse financial systems within the United States healthcare system, with specific focus on reimbursement methods and payment systems and how they affect providers and payers. It reviews major insurance programs, federal healthcare insurance and related legislation, legal/regulatory issues associated with health insurance, diagnosis and procedure coding systems, and the impact of coding on reimbursement, compliance, and fraud and abuse.

Prerequisites: None

This course will provide tutorial guidance and advanced preparation in either quantitative or qualitative research analysis, dependent upon the research methodology appropriate to the emerging dissertation questions proposed by the doctoral student. The course will extend prior graduate training in research methodology and will concentrate on those processes most related to the proposed study. Instruction will be provided by a faculty member and a qualified field mentor who is acquainted with the research being proposed.

Prerequisites: None