Online MSN – MBA: Healthcare Management Courses

MBA 711 is a fully online course that focuses on written communication skills for professionals, emphasizing the critical role effective, carefully crafted written communications play in successful business and nonprofit leadership. Students prepare various short pieces of writing throughout the semester, such as memos, emails, and letters. Topics include business/corporate, technical, and persuasive writing; and grammar, mechanics, and style (this course uses APA).

Dealing with emerging trends in information technology (IT) and its management, this course is particularly useful for students managing or working closely with IT initiatives such as ERP, CRM, SaaS, Business Intelligence, e-commerce, supply chain management, disaster recovery, telecommunications, networking, ethics and privacy. Students taking this course will become familiar with fundamental concepts and terminology of modern information technology management.

Strategic Analysis introduces the concepts within business strategy as a competitive advantage, by framing the fundamental relationship between strategy and operational effectiveness. It prepares students to develop and present a strategic plan by working on an individual and/or team basis using industry-leading tools such as value chain analysis, benchmarking, and Blue Ocean strategy. Best practices in strategic methods are applied to for-profit and not-for-profit sectors in both U.S. and global contexts, with an emphasis on critical analysis and ethical leadership behaviors across industries.

This course focuses on decision making as a fundamental activity of professionals working in any management discipline. Modern leaders need to deal with a myriad of factors that affect the achievement of their goals. This course addresses the fundamental problems that occur in managerial decision making at both the theoretical and a practical level. At the theoretical level, students will learn what we currently know about making effective decisions. At the practical level, this course offers the opportunity to learn a decision-making framework widely used in organizations, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). This method combines simplicity with rigor and has been successfully applied to make decisions in economic, social, political and technological environments.

This course focuses on organizational development and transformation. The world is constantly changing, and we live in what leadership theorist Peter Vaill once described as “permanent white water”- a churning, ever-moving, sometimes dangerous environment. As business leaders, we must know how to embrace and lead change for the optimal achievement of goals and organizational strength. This course reviews leading change issues and strategies and will help you understand and manage the dynamics of change on a personal, organizational, and global level.

Introduces the MBA student to theories and techniques critical to the function of business analytics as defined by The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Discussions focus on framing the business problem or question, framing the analytics problem, managing data, selecting the analytics approach, and addressing the business problems/questions based on data analysis results. Discussion will also involve understanding the basics of good research design methodology (quantitative and qualitative) and the applications of those methodologies in current business/professional research. Students will discuss evidence-based decision making, and work on real or simulated analytics projects using analytical packages and statistical tools.

This course examines corporate financial management and financial planning. Topics include: financial statements, financial statement analysis, working capital management, time value of money, cost of capital, long-term debt, capital budgeting, stock markets, investment banking, mergers, international financial management and current issues in the global economy. This course will afford the student the opportunity to examine several functions and responsibilities of a corporation’s accounting and finance departments.

This course provides a review of federal, state and local laws affecting employers including discrimination, wage and collective bargaining issues. Statutes, regulations, executive orders and Court decisions will provide the student with both theoretical and pragmatic competencies in legal analysis of employment-related issues. The life of an employment case will be examined through case discussions and experiential learning.

Introduces essential concepts and strategies for effective project management in the context of health care. Topics will include project selection, project initiation, defining scope, identifying project teams, defining project goals, time management, implementation activities, and project monitoring.

This graduate level writing course will help the student refine writing skills from the fundamentals of writing through argumentation. Through a series of small writing assignments, this course will prepare the student for scholarly writing and research.

This course focuses on theoretical foundations and conceptual principles of leadership, professional collaboration, communications, and the skills necessary to practice leadership competently in healthcare environments, recognizing that organizational and systems leadership are critical to the promotion of high quality and safe patient care. Key concepts including ethical and critical decision making, motivation and individual behavior, interpersonal and group behavior, job satisfaction, work stress and culture, and influences of micro-, meso-, and macro-organizational behaviors are explored. The course is designed to enhance leadership self-awareness and to encourage students to fashion personal perspectives on how to lead professionally. Analyzing trends and issues in the current health care system that have implications for exercising leadership will help students determine the way they can make a difference.

This graduate level course addresses health risks and trends in communities and in families. High-risk populations, aggregates, and communities comprise the focus for investigation. Developmental, psychodynamic, social-political, and cultural theories and concepts are synthesized and applied to analysis of health behaviors in community settings and in families across the life cycle. Risk appraisal methods and evidence-based strategies to identify and prevent health risks in individuals, families, and communities are examined. This course highlights local, state, and federal resources for families, particularly those individuals in medically underserved areas.

This course introduces economic concepts and current policy issues facing the United States health care system. Issues of cost, quality, access, disparities, and finance will be examined from the view of payers, providers, and regulators, and the interactions of these stakeholders both within the United States and in comparison with global markets. Topics will include various health care markets, the role of government in financing of health care, the structure and functions of public and private health insurance, economic components of the delivery system, and understanding the challenges of health care reform.

This course examines the ethical, moral, and legal accountability and professional responsibility for nurse leaders, nurse educators and advanced practice nurses (APN). Ethical leadership and the roles of the leaders, nurse educators and APN as it relates to social justice, technology and business, research, and advanced practice specialty areas will be explored. The regulatory and legal framework for leaders, nurse educators, and APNs scope of practice will be addressed. Ethical reasoning, decision making, and action will be applied.

This course focuses on quality, informatics, and the role of statistics in quality improvement. Concepts, models, and strategies of quality improvement and informatics are examined. Students will apply principles of quality and regulatory management with an emphasis on defining, measuring, and evaluating outcomes within and across organizational systems. The student will apply informatics and statistical concepts to identify, gather, process, and manage information/data. At the end of the course, the student will be able to create and implement innovative solutions to improve patient care and safety.