B.A. in Health Care Administration: Curriculum

This course emphasizes leadership communication processes with a focus on leadership skills and strategic planning. Specific topics include decision making, problem solving, conflict and change management, and how to cultivate a supportive work environment. Presentation and interviewing skills will also be highlighted.

This course is designed to provide students with a historical background in epidemiological studies. The course will expose students to the principles and concepts necessary for understanding the basics of epidemiological activity and classical epidemiological investigations. The course will also cover material related to general research methods, statistics, and trend analysis in an effort to identify evidence-based practices in health care settings.

Students use literature, interviews and class discussion to explore the values, beliefs, customs and perceptions represented in various kinds of diversity affecting social and economic life. Students explore the obligations and implications of equal opportunity in organizations while they develop organizational strategies to benefit from diversity in the United States and abroad.

Explores the major concepts of finance within an organizational context, including basic accounting terms, budgeting, time value of money, types of healthcare payments and insurance systems, and global considerations, as students use standard financial tools to make business assessments and financial decisions important for managers in a healthcare organization.

This course examines the discipline of health care economics as students study demand management; concepts of efficiency, production, and distribution of health care services; impact of regulation and reimbursement; and economic incentives in health care. This course also reviews how the economic behaviors of health care consumers and suppliers, particularly in the United States, affect the manner in which scarce resources are allocated.

This is a foundational course in ethics for individuals pursuing vocations of service in health care. Students will have a greater understanding of the ethical principles that are applied to the delivery of health care services and the processes for making sound ethical decisions. Students will develop models of decision making that are consistent with core personal values as well as the ethical standards of their professions. Motivations for ethical healthcare decisions will be evaluated. The roles and responsibilities of healthcare professionals will be explored on the basis of Christian values as well as assumptions drawn from reason and societal norms and expectations.

This course integrates the treatment of law and management. It helps managers and leaders spot legal issues before they become legal problems and emphasizes developing the legal astuteness to craft solutions that attain core organizational objectives without incurring undue legal risk. Traditional legal concepts are discussed as well as current topics in developing areas of the law. An emphasis on ethical concerns stimulates understanding of how managers must incorporate considerations of ethics and social responsibility into their managerial actions.

This course is designed to introduce students to health care information systems and help them understand why the interlocking of these systems provides numerous challenges and opportunities for health care providers in the years to come. Students will learn how to collect, massage, manipulate data in order to make it useful. There is plenty of useless data and information available; the real professional can mine that data and information into golden nuggets of knowledge.

The focus of this course is to examine the role law plays in the everyday operation of our health care system from the management perspective. Key topics will include: The Affordable Care Act of 2010, Corporate Compliance and Integrity, Fraud and Abuse, health care laws, and health care regulatory agencies. Laws and bills related to health care in the State of Minnesota will be examined and followed.

The strategy process represents an essential opportunity for health care leaders to establish, implement and guide the organization’s direction in these turbulent waters of changing distribution systems. Students will look at the strategies of health care organizations in an increasingly global and competitive marketplace.