B-W: Master of Business Administration in Health Care Courses

Foundation Courses
BUS	500A	FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING	*Three credit hours*
This course develops a working knowledge of the basic accounting system. The primary focus is on financial accounting by the business entity. Students learn to read and understand the four standard financial reports: the balance sheet, income statement, statement of cash flows, and statement of retained earnings with emphasis on their implications for management.
BUS	500Q	QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS	*Three credit hours*
A course for individuals who have a limited background in algebraic and statistical techniques. Students are exposed to statistical models and applications for quantitative methods in modern management.

Core Course Descriptions
BUS	701	ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY & THE SYSTEMS APPROACH TO MANAGEMENT	*Three credit hours*
This course introduces health care students to the systems approach to management. It is an overview of the theories of general systems, systems-thinking, and the systems approach to management. Students apply the systems approach to building systems models of the organizations represented in the class. These models provide an understanding of the interdependencies in health care systems along the entire continuum of care in a variety of health care organizations. Managers will learn to make more effective decisions across formally and informally structured delivery systems plus the various structures in which health care is delivered on an integrated basis.
BUS	705	ACCOUNTABILITY OF FINANCIAL RESOURCES	*Three credit hours*
This course shows the student how accounting systems can be designed to provide healthcare managers with useful information for decision-making. Students will use this information in cost-volume-profit and operational and capital budgeting exercises to improve their planning efforts, in learning how to make better operating decisions, and in conducting more meaningful performance analyses. The problems encountered in overhead allocation will be discussed in detail. Quantitative models will be introduced when appropriate, decision-making under uncertainty will be emphasized, and the need for a cost-benefit trade-off analysis will be a central theme in the course.
BUS	709	MICRO�ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR	*Three credit hours*
This course provides an analysis of behavioral science approaches to organizations stressing the implications of theoretical concepts on managerial practice. Topics include functions and dysfunctions of bureaucracy, individual needs and organization requirements, group processes, and organizations as systems. Basic concepts used to study special topics are conflict management, leadership, communications, and organizational change and development.
BUS	711	HEALTH CARE INFORMATION SYSTEMS	*Three credit hours*
This course presents an overview of the uses of and management of information systems and technology in health care. It is directed to managerial end-users of information systems, and to those managers who will need to make strategic decisions regarding the use of capital and operating funds for the acquisition and operation of information systems and technology. The main objective is to build a basic understanding of the value and uses of information systems and information technology (both onsite and web-based) for business operations, management decisions making, and strategic advantage. Special emphasis is placed on the planning and financing of managerial and enterprise information systems.
BUS	747	OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT	*Three credit hours*
This course develops a systems approach to the analysis of senior health care managerial operating problems. Computer, quantitative, and behavioral models are used to formulate operating decisions consistent with a health care organizations competitive strategy.
BUS	748	FINANCIAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS AND CONTROL	*Three credit hours*
Analysis of financial information is central to financial control, forecasting, and decision making. It also is central to the evaluation of managed care operations, competitors, or merger candidates. This course gives students insight into financial statement analysis, cash flow projections, capital budget evaluation, working capital management, and the primary methods of financing the corporation (both for-profit and not-for-profit models are emphasized). Various measures of risk and methods of assessing the risk-return trade-off are also presented. Examination of actual institutions is incorporated into the course.
BUS	750	TOPICS IN FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT	*Three credit hours*
This course will investigate special topics in financial management such as the lease versus the buy option, bond refunding, mergers, LBOs, divestitures, business failures, activity-based management, and organizational performance. Coverage of topics introduced in earlier financial management courses, e.g., operational and capital budgeting, cost-volume-profit analysis, and working capital management, will be extended. Forecasting, linear programming and simulation techniques from the operations analysis field will be used extensively in this expanded coverage.
BUS	757	INTRO TO AMERICAN HEALTH CARE	*One credit hour*
This course explores the history, evolution and current state of health services delivery and financing in the United States. Topics include the components of the system, health services professions, financing mechanisms, the insurance industry, medical technology and the cost, quality, access equation.
BUS	758	HEALTH CARE POLICY & LAW	*One credit hour*
This course discusses the policy development process at the federal and state levels, reviews major health policy milestones and the current state of policy development. Comparisons are drawn to health policy/systems in other countries. An introduction to business and health law is provided including corporate structures, governance, liability and government regulatory compliance.
BUS	760	THE MARKETING ENVIRONMENT	*Three credit hours*
The health care organization must deal with strategic and tactical issues if it is to serve its customers effectively. The course places special emphasis on the determination of longer term marketing strategy, the building of shorter term tactics, and the significance marketing has on the strategic direction of the firm. Emphasis is given to new health care competitive issues and applied marketing problems confronting executives today.
BUS	765	MACRO-ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR	*Three credit hours*
The course is designed to provide the systems manager with theories and skills for implementing organizational change. The individual, the project team, and the organization are the basic units of study and the topics of leading change while maintaining effective interpersonal behavior is presented as one of the most important factors in organizational change.
BUS	771	THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM	*Three credit hours*
This course gives students an understanding of how the US economy operates, so that they will understand the national economic environment in which the health care industry operates now and in the future. Descriptions of how the overall economy works are presented from an intuitive perspective rather than from a mathematical/theoretical perspective. Emphasis is placed on readily available sources of important data about the economy�s recent performance, on interpreting those data, and on obtaining and evaluating forecasts of the economy�s future performance. The forces influencing economic growth, interest rates, inflation, employment, and living standards are studied. Government policies for influencing the economy in general, and the health care industry in particular, are examined together with the organization of policy-making bodies and the motivations of policy makers.
BUS	800	POWER AND ETHICS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF ORGANIZATIONS	*Three credit hours*
This course puts students in the role of managers in health care organizations confronting challenges requiring the exercise of power inside and outside the organization and facing ethical dilemmas caused by the explosion of technology, increased competition, and the demands of government, employers, and the public. It provides a framework to help health care managers consider issues of power, ethics, and public policy.
BUS	870	POLICY FORMULATION & STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT	*Three credit hours*
In this course, participants are introduced to the science and art of strategy making and strategy-implementation as applied to healthcare organizations. The systems approach, its key concepts and principles are utilized to explain the underlying logic of strategic management as the ultimate tool for managing change, as well as managing in changing market and industry environment. Specifically course participants are trained in the strategic tools, and the concepts they�re based on, necessary for the following managerial skills: formulating a strategic intent, setting performance results, crafting corporate, competitive and functional strategies, planning implementation of crafted strategies, and executing and controlling the organizations total strategic blueprint for steering, instead of drifting, towards its strategic intent. Participants develop these skills primarily by conducting a comprehensive, real-time strategic analysis of an actual healthcare organization. Additionally, participants also undertake a strategic analysis of their own sector of the healthcare industry, as a means of helping to add value in their current job and to their current employer. The course is the culmination of the two-year process in developing the executive mind of program participants, and uses the integrative logic of strategic management to help pull together the total business education they received in the program.

MBA - Health Care

Master of Business Administration in Health Care Courses