Master's of Health Care (MBA) Program Outline

This non-credit orientation is a foundation-building experience that introduces and refreshes the skills necessary for success in your Master's Degree Program. You'll learn how to navigate ProQuest, Ashworth College's online library, and review the distinguishing characteristics of academic journals and other publications. Internet research skills are polished enabling you to identify credible and unbiased Web sites for your research. Emphasis is placed on submission requirements, project structures, and writing formats used throughout your coursework, and APA writing style. The final portion of this course provides you the opportunity to research and explore the various career fields in the world of Business Administration.

Plan for increased productivity. Learn about the organization, its structure, and its relationship to the economic, political, and social environments surrounding it. Examine theories and guidelines for dealing with geopolitical events, consumer trends, and new developments in information technology. You'll study a model of strategic management using the 'strategic audit' as an approach to addressing complex organization-wide issues.

Discover how marketing serves as a foundation for making critical decisions related to identifying customers, delineating which needs to satisfy, developing products and services that satisfy these needs, setting prices, using appropriate communications, staging sales promotions, managing the sales force, selecting channels of distribution, maintaining funding and coordinating partnerships. Concepts presented are directed to the marketplace realities of the 21st century, including global marketing.

Integrate accounting data into your decision-making process. Managerial accounting is an essential tool that enhances managers' abilities to make sound decisions. You'll examine concepts and procedures of managerial accounting from the user's viewpoint, how they are typically applied in real-world situations, and see the role they play in improving the decision-making process within all types of organizations. Also discussed are issues in cost basics, cost management systems, planning and control, and product costing.

Develop your leadership potential. Discover the qualities, talents, and vision that leaders need to survive and grow in a changing world. You'll examine how today's theories of leadership and motivation have evolved, and how leadership concepts and motivational techniques are applied in a wide variety of business environments. Case studies reveal how executives and other decision makers lead, motivate and succeed.

Learn how to take appropriate action to solve community health problems. Today's public health practitioner faces both challenges and exciting possibilities but limited resources. This course provides a practical introduction to the organization, administration and practice of public health. You'll also examine the role of public health services in addressing infectious disease control, environmental health, prevention effectiveness, bioterrorism and global health issues in the 21st century. And you'll consider health reform's focus on illness rather than disease prevention.

Use financial data to your advantage. Learn what financial disclosures contain and how they effect management decision-making, plus the principles and economic factors behind publicly reported disclosures, their limitations and constraints, and how to analyze them. You'll examine research methods and how they help you convert raw data into useful information that influences decisions about financial performance, wealth creation and economic valuation.

Plan for changes in managed care. Managed care has had a profound impact on the health care delivery system today. Nurses can play an important role in managed care and help define its future as it relates to patient rights, quality of care, patient education and more. Explore case management, cost and performance strategies, reimbursement, collaborative care, legal compliance, the clinical pathway and finances.

Link personnel activities to business strategies. Examine specific management challenges faced by actual firms and the role of human resources. Learn about recruitment, employment planning and forecasting, managing diversity, testing, interviewing, the training process, organizing teams, appraising performance, establishing strategic pay plans, financial incentives, benefits, labor relations, collective bargaining, employee security and more.

Utilize data as an asset. Explore the manager's role in utilizing data as an asset and setting procedures for safe data storage, maintenance, accessibility and security. This practical course also reveals the latest legislation affecting health data as well as best practices for data warehousing, web technologies and database management in health information practice.

Protect people and property. Health care security is expected to change dramatically in the next few years. This course covers security issues in-depth, including the security management plan, security officer training, equipment and electronics, maternity center issues, the emergency department, bomb threats, workplace violence, parking, medical records and more.

Create a strong value system based on sound medical ethics. Awaken your analytical powers and sharpen your critical thinking skills as you analyze both classic and contemporary case studies that demonstrate important facets of ethical perspectives in health care. Examine issues related to life, death and medical technology; abortion; assisted suicide; genetics; HIV; organ transplants; the patient/provider relationship; genetics; and more.

Use your business skills and knowledge in thought-provoking case studies. You'll begin by learning the fundamentals of economics - the study of the allocation of resources to satisfy both needs and wants. Then, you'll analyze case studies on a variety of businesses from a small company to an entire industry - set in the environments of local, national, and global economies. Conclude with a Capstone Project and Exam.