Courses

This intensive gateway seminar introduces you to key program themes and course materials. It helps frame initial themes of the program content that will follow in the online portion of the experience. The seminar will allow for ample networking and collaborative opportunities among course colleagues, faculty, and prominent guest speakers. Key themes to be explored are: leading in a disrupted health care delivery sector, understanding broad system influencers, quality improvement and evidence-based decisions in health care delivery, reform basis of the Affordable Care Act, and managing critical urban health issues. There will also be a highly interactive session on personal leadership development.

This course begins with a review of the critical public policy issues facing the US health care system, followed by an examination of the formulation and implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA). The study of ACA formulation and implementation will address the intent and design of the law and then what the law demands in practice from the government.

Topics to be explored within ACA formulation and implementation are:

• The individual mandate
• Medicaid expansion
• Subsidized exchanges
• Insurance regulations
• Cost containment

For current and aspiring health care managers, this course seeks to illuminate central components of health care policy, a critically important area.  The course also  examines the political forces that have created the different types of public intervention that constitute current US health care policy. It explores how the government (especially the federal government) has influenced the voluntary and private institutions in the health care system, and how public policy intervention has built up steadily since World War II. You will gain a better understanding of the policy constraints and opportunities you confront in your work. You will gain a greater ability to position yourself and your organization to influence political dynamics and policy outcomes.

This course provides an overview of the economics of health care delivery for industry leaders. It begins with an in-depth analysis of the structure and dynamics of the US health care system and trends in health care expenditures. We address economic perspectives and theory related to the production of health care and the supply and demand of health care services, the health insurance market, the structure of health care systems and industries through the continuum of care (medical practices, hospitals, and post-acute care providers), and health care system reform.

Designed for experienced managers in a health care or related organizations, this course is an opportunity to learn how to transform organizational knowledge into a strategic management system. We will examine the uses of external environmental analysis, organizational assessment, practical research, data collection and leadership principles as the basis for the creation of strategic management and leadership tools. We will focus on the analytical dimensions of strategic thinking and planning to ensure you are exposed to the technical and conceptual elements of strategy.

Communications and marketing strategy must keep pace with rapid changes in the new health care landscape. Health care leaders and managers must understand the fundamentals of communications, marketing, and digital strategy to ensure effective delivery of health care services. The new competitive landscape requires focused attention on brand, perception of quality, and the ways to advance core functions in order for businesses to remain viable. Similarly, the use of digital and social media in personal, professional, and institutional marketing and branding are key drivers of leadership success. This course will explore these new realities and focus on critical topics.

This course is designed to increase the critical leadership competencies that are essential for the leaders of the most complex health care organizations. In order for  organizations to flourish in the current environment, leaders must be aware of their own idiosyncrasies, as well as their strengths, weaknesses, values, and ways they resolve conflicts.  They also must excel at building and leading teams, interdependent functions, and large scale systems. Successful leaders of tomorrow must be experts in change management, labor-management relations, and strategic organizational leadership. The course will enhance what you have learned from experience through frameworks and models that will prepare you to understand the relationship between senior leadership and the health care organization’s attainment of competitive advantage.

This course is designed to provide an understanding of the analytical methods health care managers and executives need to critically interpret the findings of comparative effectiveness studies and to use hospital-derived data for assessing and improving quality of care and process performance. The course structure contains four overarching topics:

• Biostatistical and epidemiological methods for comparative effectiveness research
• Statistical process control
• The scope and limits of evidence-based medicine
• Hospital-based and public sources of health care data

Through selected readings, case studies, problem-solving assignments, on-line self-study components, and lecture presentations and discussions, you will develop a conceptual understanding of the principles and analytical tools necessary to become a critical reader of health services research literature. This will enable you to identify and adopt best practices for your institution. Moreover, it will give you the analytical skills needed for guiding quality improvement projects effectively.

This intensive seminar focuses on the central elements that ensure quality throughout health care delivery systems and organizations. These elements include:

• An examination of patient safety management
• Quality improvement concepts and innovations
• The clinical microsystems approach to value and quality improvement

The seminar will  allow course colleagues, faculty, and prominent guest speakers to network and collaborate. There will also be another interactive session on personal leadership development.

The health care field is one of the most information-intensive sectors in the US economy and avoidance of the rapid advances in information technology is no longer an option. Consequently, the study of health care information technology and systems has become central to health care delivery effectiveness. This course covers the modern application of information technology that is critical to supporting the vision and operational knowledge of health care leaders. Health care decision makers must meet head-on the dynamic challenges of health care delivery, quality, cost, access, and regulatory control. In addition, this course integrates the Healthcare Information System as integral to the Quality Assurance Tracking Programs. This includes measurement of systems inputs, processes, and outputs with special emphasis on systems outcomes research and organizational accountability to its various stakeholders, notably government regulators.

This course provides an intensive examination of financial decision-making concepts and tools critical to ensuring accountable, effective, and efficient health care delivery. Topics will intersect the domains of resource allocation, managerial accounting, and corporate finance that are most relevant to health care delivery. No previous advanced knowledge of finance is required for the course. Course topics and materials are delivered from the standpoint of equipping you with critical frameworks to support leadership-level decisions involving finance or issues with critical financial dimensions.

This course provides a solid foundation in the role of production and operations management in the health care industry. You will review the integration of human, economic and technological factors in accomplishing the operations management mission and executing the related strategies. Among the many important topics are: evidence-based medicine, balanced scorecard, statistics, forecasting, simulation, capacity planning, scheduling, location analysis for clinics, process strategy involving patient flow, supply chain management, project management, and quality control management. We will also examine the role of ethics within the framework of the operations management's sub-functions.

This course will enable you to probe the Public Health and Community/Population-Based Approach and address the core principles and functions of public health, including how this approach differs from acute care medicine, and how public functions are institutionalized in the US health care system. The course will focus upon arguments and evidence that the health status of populations is shaped not by medical care and health care policy but rather by basic social conditions that often correlate closely with class, race, and ethnicity. Interrelated topics include: status and stress; social isolation and community engagement; complex socio-clinical conditions (mental illness, HIV, substance abuse, homelessness); promotion of healthy behaviors; and the role of the ACA in advancing public health.

This course immerses you in best-in-class microsystems methods that organize front-line health care delivery to maximize quality, value, and flexibility for innovation. The Microsystem approaches provide defined processes and techniques which serve as an effective vehicle for implementing  organizational change at the point of care. The course will focus on planning processes, tools and techniques that can be applied immediately in clinical settings. Several Mount Sinai and other hospital-based clinical microsystem innovations will be examined as detailed case studies.

You will have the opportunity to work on a project that directly addresses a strategic problem in your institution, or carefully examine one of a host institution. This action learning project will enable the application and integration of course material into a coherent response and potential solution(s) to an actual health care delivery issue. These projects will form a repository of knowledge that program cohort peers can use to learn from and share.