MPH Functional Certificate: Healthcare Management (CAHME-accredited*)
The challenges in organizing healthcare delivery systems to improve patient care quality and achieve population-level access and equity while controlling costs have never been greater. SPH’s practice-based program in healthcare management provides graduates crucial analytical and leadership competencies to tackle these challenges. Graduates can analyze the organization, financing, and delivery of healthcare; analyze effects of healthcare policy; apply project management and quality improvement tools; and lead individuals and teams to improve care delivery.
Upon completion of the MPH with the 28-unit certificate in Healthcare Management, graduates excel in five key areas:
Health Care System Analysis
- Demonstrate an understanding of the factors that shape the US healthcare system.
- Analyze the structures, processes, and outcomes observed in the organization, function, delivery, and financing of health services in the US.
- Apply economic and financial analysis to understand the causes of high costs of healthcare services in the US.
- Analyze strategic alternatives using policy, market, and organizational analyses to develop forward-looking recommendations.
- Compare the organization, delivery, and financing of the US healthcare system to systems in other nations.
Health Policy Analysis
- Analyze how competing stakeholder interests shape the development and implementation of health policies.
- Assess how health policies influence the allocation, financing, and delivery of healthcare.
Improvement and Implementation
- Translate visions and strategies into specific goals and implementation plans with deliverables, timelines, and budgets.
- Apply planning/management tools and techniques to achieve successful project completion.
- Apply operations/financial concepts and data to pursue evidence-based approaches to care delivery.
- Critically appraise and synthesize healthcare quality data to use in pursuit of quality improvement.
- Identify roles and applications of health information and digital systems to optimize healthcare delivery.
Leadership
- Collaborate in teams to set clear goals and expectations, assess the contributions of others, and provide clear developmental feedback.
- Improve one’s own performance based on feedback from others.
- Communicate mission, vision, goals, and recommended courses of action.
- Apply problem-solving and negotiation principles to understand conflicts in interpersonal, organizational, and political contexts, and develop viable solutions.
- Analyze organizational dynamics and relationships in order to improve strategies.
- Apply change management principles at the individual and organizational levels.
- Improve one’s understanding of how issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and racial and social justice influence the management of healthcare organizations and the health of patients.
Professionalism
- Persuasively and clearly communicate in formal and informal situations, using technology to support the presentation of ideas and data.
- Prepare communications in a clear, logical, and effective manner in a variety of formats (emails, policy briefs, memos, research papers).
- Develop strategies for exploring career options and accurately seeing one’s own strengths and development needs.
- Demonstrate an understanding of the importance of establishing and sustaining professional networks.
- Apply ethical guidelines for sound professional practice.
Course Requirements
- SPH GH 854 Data to Dashboards: Building Excel Skills to Support Health Program Decisions (2 units)
- SPH PM 714 Health Care Management as a Profession (0 units)
- SPH PM 734 Principles and Practices in Non-Profit Healthcare Accounting (4 units)
- SPH PM 735 Healthcare Finance: How Policy-makers and Managers Can Use Money as a Tool to Improve Health Care (4 units)
- SPH PM 736 Human Resource Management in Public Health (4 units)
- SPH PM 755 Healthcare Delivery Systems: Issues and Innovations (4 units)
- SPH PM 804 Digital Disruption in Health: The Effects of Health Information Technologies on Policies, Delivery, Patient Engagement, and Health Outcomes (2 units)
- SPH PM 827 Strategic Management of Healthcare Organizations (4 units)
- SPH PM 832 Operations Management in Healthcare (4 units) or PM 835 Lean Management in Healthcare (4 units)
Integrative Learning Experience
The ILE for the Healthcare Management certificate is designed to be completed during a student’s last term in the program, and is focused on evidence-based management, requiring that students apply current research findings in the field of healthcare management to an applied healthcare delivery problem or question.
*Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education