Posts in the Course Profiles Category at Executive MBA for Physicians Blog

Category: Course Profiles

The Physicians Field Experience: Practical Expertise in the Classroom

Students speaking to one another in the classroom On a daily basis, Brandeis EMBA physicians take the theoretical learning from the classroom and apply it to their clinical and administrative responsibilities. One specific course that offers these practical lessons is the Physicians Field Experience (PFE) – a 3 credit course spread over 3 semesters in which physicians have direct access to guest lecturers about current events, on the ground leadership experiences, and career related topics. This masterclass examines concrete issues students may be facing and brings experts beyond the program faculty into the classroom.

Past PFE presenters have included:

A headhunter at a major firm who specializes in recruiting physicians.
A state-level CDC director who spoke about his state’s pandemic response.
A former hospital CEO who turned around a hospital’s culture and brought the hospital out of significant financial difficulty.
An expert in negotiations and women in medicine.
A Heller School Associate Dean focused on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion who led a discussion about implicit bias in medicine.
A community leader focused on youth violence in Boston who spoke about how to move racial justice conversations forward in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
An Emmy nominated media expert who gave advice for doctors handling the media during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A physician who introduced a dashboard at a New York academic medical center that increased accountability between physicians.

Angie Kloepfer-Shapiro, MD, MBA’21 partnered with PFE Professor Jon Chilingerian in working with one speaker prior to their session, helping to hone the scope of their presentation to be particularly relevant to the interests of the cohort. Dr. Kloepfer-Shapiro thinks the class “has been an incredible opportunity to interact directly with clinician and non-clinician experts from a variety of industries. PFE has helped me to refine my own approach to management and has opened my eyes to the varied roles available to physicians in leadership.”

Lori Berkowitz, MD, MBA’21 has also found the class to be particularly useful. “It’s been surprising to me how helpful the Physician Field Experience has been and how much I look forward to those classes in particular. Hearing the way in which leaders have approached challenges, as well as their careers in general, is a highlight of the MBA experience.”

The PFE is also a chance for students and alumni share their own exceptional experiences. Richard Bold, MD, MBA’20 presented to his class about leadership in times of acute crisis. He discussed his experience during California’s wildfires when he worked in a regional hospital that had to be rapidly evacuated and was subsequently destroyed. This was based on his role working with the hospital as Medical Director of Cancer Network Operations and Physician-In-Chief of the Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dr. Bold shares, “The Physician Field Experience gave me the opportunity to critically analyze how healthcare leaders make decisions in times of uncertainty, seeking information and input but remaining resolute having made difficult decisions. It allowed an evaluation of leadership styles and effectiveness of teams, decision-making under pressure and optimal interpersonal communication. It was a great opportunity to see how all the classroom lessons can be successfully applied in the real world through competent and effective leadership and provided the framework to which I aspire.”

The Executive MBA for Physicians program seeks to train physicians in the new science of medicine and management. The PFE brings those concepts to life by exposing student to professionals who navigate the intersection of those discipline.

EMBA Alum Discusses His Role as CMO in an HCA Hospital

October 6, 2020 / cmattox / 0 Comments

Below is an interview with Dr. Bill Killinger, CMO of a major hospital in Florida and Class of 2020 Executive MBA graduate.

Please tell us about your role. What are you responsible for?

I am the Chief Medical Officer for a large HCA hospital in Florida. It’s a great job. As CMO, I have numerous responsibilities. I am first and foremost in charge of patient safety and the quality of care delivered in my hospital. HCA makes patient safety a priority; we use over 30 dashboards to track process improvement and ensure quality. I am also accountable for driving satisfaction in three arenas: with patients, physicians, and employees. Ensuring high levels of satisfaction in all three areas is critical to achieving our mission. The CMO has significant operational oversight for the emergency rooms and procedural areas and with overall hospital operational efficiency in terms of length of stay. As part of the executive team, I am heavily involved in financial planning and growth, and I work directly with the CEO and COO on new program development, marketing, and strategic planning. Finally, as the senior clinician, I help explain clinical matters to the Board of Trustees. I wear a lot of hats. Every day is a different challenge!

How has your work changed as a result of COVID-19?

I had been in my role as CMO for 4 months when COVID hit. I was just really learning the operations and getting to know the medical staff. Almost overnight, the world changed. We were very cognizant of the situations in Italy and in New York City. We were not sure how hard we would be hit here in our area. I was communicating with county emergency leaders almost daily and reached out to the CMOs at our competing hospital to form county-wide contingency plans. My hospital held emergency administrative meetings 7 days a week, sometimes multiple times during a day as we managed PPE, ventilator, and ICU bed shortages and scrambled to fill staffing shortfalls. It was wild. I had to organize hospital triage committees and action plans to prepare for the unthinkable prospect of an overwhelming influx of critically ill patients. We spent a lot of time with the ethics committee to ensure our triage plan was equitable in the event we were faced with a situation like in Bergamo, Italy.

We also operate a freestanding Behavioral Health hospital, which presents several unique challenges. We had to develop an entirely different strategy to keep that vulnerable population safe. Early on, we implemented universal admission testing and employee masking- well before it was recommended. Our strategy has been effective. We have had no patient deaths or serious illnesses in that hospital so far.

What have been the differences between your experience at a nonprofit and a for-profit healthcare organization?

I was initially concerned about the transition from the not-for-profit world to the corporate world. I can honestly say it has been great. We have four care standards which are central to everything we do. In order, they are safety, hospitality, empathy, and efficiency. We take these very seriously and consider every decision first in terms of the care standards. They are the core of who we are and what we do. Patient safety is always first. Notice that efficiency is last; it’s very important but never trumps the other three standards. I actually have more safety resources here than I had in my previous institution.

How has the EMBA for Physicians program (and any specific skills and tools you learned) helped you in your CMO role? In your response to COVID-19?

The EMBA has been helpful in so many ways. The strong focus on organizational leadership was crucial. Leadership is a skill, and I learned a tremendous amount from the faculty. I had zero background in finance, and the accounting and corporate finance courses have proven to be invaluable. This I think is the key advantage of the MBA over an MHA; I understand and can actively participate in the budgeting and strategic planning for my hospital in a way I could have never done without the Brandeis program. The courses were tough but are paying big dividends (corporate finance pun!). There were so many other important courses – healthcare law and ethics, marketing, state health policy – I use the learnings from the EMBA every day. Putting together the team consulting project gave me confidence I could navigate a complex project through to completion. The physician field experience sessions, especially the media relations seminars, were especially valuable to me. I’ve found myself unexpectedly in front of the camera or microphone several times in the last six months, and that training was worth its weight in gold.

My classmates were some of the most impressive people I’ve met. I have reached out to them on many occasions since graduation for advice. It’s a tremendous honor to be a member of this network. I would recommend this EMBA program to anyone. You will work really hard, but the faculty is great, your classmates are great, and if you put in the effort, you can do it. It’s among the best decisions I’ve made.

Welcoming the Class of 2020 and the EMBA for Physicians Orientation Process

February 6, 2019 / cmattox / 0 Comments

Program Director Dr. Jon Chilingerian participates with the class of 2020 during the Masterclass in Human Creativity

This past January, the Brandeis Executive MBA for Physicians program welcomed the class of 2020. The 29 physicians in the cohort join the program from 16 states (from every U.S. region) and India. The cohort also represents 14 specialties, including surgery, cardiology, pathology, and internal medicine. They are 41% women, and about one third are U.S. students of color. Their average age is 48 with over 15 years on average of post-residency work experience. During their first 10 day in-person residency session, they participated in EMBA orientation, developed their network by meeting and working with each other and the class of 2019, and began their first semester courses.

The class of 2020 began their EMBA preparation in December by attending one of two live orientation webinars that walked them through aspects of the program and what to expect during the January residency. They also purchased their course textbooks and started to review the tasks and deliverables ahead of time. Further preparation included completing a self-assessment and inviting colleagues of all organizational levels (supervisors, peers, and direct reports) to complete assessments to build a 360 degree report on the physicians’ leadership styles which was then reviewed during residency with the support of executive and peer coaches.

Once they arrived on site in January, they participated in sessions designed to orient students to what it is to be an EMBA participant and to allow the cohort to get to know each other and build strong bonds. In one such session, the students participated in a “Masterclass in Human Creativity and Collaboration” led by Program Director Dr. Jon Chilingerian and a Fortune magazine featured keynote speaker and workshop instructor who brings his perspective as an improviser, actor, writer & director to corporate and business education environments. In another session, students were able to practice how to engage as a class in a case discussion – a specific classroom tool used by many faculty to facilitate learning.

This January marked the first time that the program has welcomed students from two different cohorts for overlapping residencies. The class of 2019 returned for their third residency as the class of 2020 wrapped up their first residency. Members of the two cohorts were able to meet and network with fellow physicians from their regions and specialties. The program sponsored a cocktail hour mixer to facilitate the building of those relationships. Students have already seen the positive results of the networking. One student from the class of 2020 met with a group of 5 other physicians from her specialty to discuss a difficult work situation. This new structure will strengthen inter-cohort bonds and foster similar connections.

By the end of the residency session, the class of 2020 had multiple meetings of each of their first semester courses – Financial Accounting, Healthcare Economics, Leadership and Organizational Behavior, and Operations Management. Those courses now continue through live, virtual webinar sessions through mid-April. The Program staff and faculty are excited to see the class of 2020 when they return in May to start their second semester.

The Importance of Political Involvement and Understanding for Physicians this November: Insight from Dr. Stuart Altman and Dr. Michael Doonan

October 9, 2018 / cmattox / 0 Comments

This month, in preparation for the November mid-term elections, we checked in with the professors who teach health policy in the EMBA for Physicians program.

Dr. Stuart Altman, who teaches Issues in National Health Policy, is the Sol C. Chaikin Professor of National Health Policy at The Heller School. He is an economist who has five decades of federal and state health policy experience within government, the private sector, and academia. He currently chairs the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission, which was created in 2012 to monitor health care spending growth.

Dr. Michael Doonan, who teaches State Health Policy, is an assistant professor at the Heller School and the Program Director for the Master of Public Policy program. Before coming to Brandeis, he had roles in the Senate, the Clinton Administration’s Health Care Taskforce, and with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He is currently the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Health Policy Forum and Director of the Council for Health Care Economics and Policy.

Below is their perspective on the importance of health policy for practicing physicians in light of the upcoming election and what physicians can expect to learn in their classes.

“For evil to succeed good people must simply do nothing.”

-Edmond Burke

Health policy is in danger of becoming less informed and effective if physician leaders do not engage. It will be more likely to endanger public health. Managers need to react to the political challenges and adapt organizational structures accordingly. Leaders influence and make change. Physician input is essential to create better systems that more effectively serve patients, organizations, communities, and the nation.

Perhaps there was a time when physicians could be more introspective and focus solely on the patient before them or the needs of a particular hospital. This is no longer the case. It is essential to understand how complex political policy change impacts access to care, reimbursement of care, and ultimately the quality of care.

The Issues in National Health Policy course provides a historical and contemporary examination of American health care systems programs and policies. This includes Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, historical efforts at reform, drivers of health care costs, and the history of payment and delivery systems. It helps answer the question of how we created the current system and the more difficult question of where are we heading.

The State Health Policy course examines state and intergovernmental relations. It looks at the range of state health care responsibilities including public health, Medicaid, licensure, insurance/health plan regulation, and more. It provides specific tools for engaging with policymakers and directly influencing policy change. This includes interviewing a senior policymaker in your state, drafting op eds and letters to the editor, and writing and presenting legislative testimony on an issue of concern.

Taken together these courses open up the black box of the policy process. It is essential for physician leaders to not only manage change but to effect it and lead it. Today policy is being driven far too much by emotion, feeling, and partisan bickering. These need to be replaced by reason and the insight of people who both understand health care and who are committed to improving patient and population health and the efficiency of the overall health care system.

Learning more about Leadership and Organizational Behavior and Management of Healthcare Organizations: An Interview with Program Director Dr. Jon Chilingerian

September 24, 2018 / cmattox / 0 Comments

Dr. Jon Chilingerian, Ph.D. is the Program Director of the Executive MBA for Physicians (EMBA) program and the four-year dual MD-MBA degree with Tufts School of Medicine. He also teaches both Leadership and Organizational Behavior and Management of Healthcare Organizations for the EMBA program. In the below interview, Dr. Chilingerian weighs in on the importance of his courses for practicing physician-leaders, his passion for educating physicians, and the classroom experience.

How can an understanding of the topics covered in both Leadership and Organizational Behavior and Management of Health Care Organizations help physicians in their professional lives?

We want clinical leaders to take note that job pressures, bosses, and toxic workplaces are a major source of stress. Although the physical environment is a big concern, we should be even more concerned about the effect of work organizations and interactions on human beings and their health. Recent studies show that 88% of people feel that they work for an organization in which no one cares about them. Designing an organization and culture in which people care about each other, feel valued, and offer patients and customers outstanding value requires effective clinical leadership. Healthcare needs leaders who understand how to get all of this done. The job of a leader is to create great teams that do amazing work on time. The Leadership & Organizational Behavior course gives you an opportunity to begin to develop your leadership skills through group work, reflection, case studies, and the literature on organizational behavior and leadership and helps you to apply this learning to your clinical role. The course is case-based with role-playing, simulations, and multi-media pedagogy.

The Management of Healthcare Organizations course has a similar focus. This course integrates the underlying and applied sciences of the core MBA curriculum. Designed to illustrate the new blossoming science of medicine and management, the course requires applying health policy, strategic management, cost accounting, operations management, organizational behavior and leadership to manage and improve very complex healthcare organizations. This course is case-based with multi-media pedagogy.

What stands out most to you about educating physicians?

What I love about working with physicians is how quickly they are able to grasp complicated ideas and how quickly they are able to think about ways in which they can put them into practice. We have tried to build a curriculum through working closely with physicians to bring material that will, in fact, give great benefit to clinical application. Physicians are superb diagnosticians. The fundamental start of any strategic thinking process is diagnosing what’s going on in the world around us. Once physicians realize that what they do as clinicians is very similar to what leaders have to do – relentlessly examining the patient’s situation and considering what should be done to improve it – they catch on faster than most students. They are among the most curious people as students I’ve ever encountered, and they have great energy which makes it easier to engage with them. On a number of different dimensions, physicians are the best students you can have sitting in front of you.

What types of activities can a physician expect in a typical residency session class? Webinar session?

To maintain my standing as a professor, I must conduct new and original research on healthcare organizations and find ways to translate that research into classroom learnings. The pedagogy that we depend on requires active learning. This means that we use case studies and simulations, role-playing, debates, and discussions in class to ensure everyone becomes an active participant and learner.

We don’t believe that learning happens unless you disturb the system a little bit. Sometimes we put you in a situation where you might be a bit uncomfortable. We think that makes for a much more dynamic learning environment. To do that, we have to pick the right cases and think about the simulation and role-playing experiences that will give everyone an opportunity to work with concepts and tools, test them out, and put them into practice. The ultimate learning takes place when we have a group of people who are all engaged and use the collective intelligence in the room to build on the ideas of others, listen, and reflect on the insights they get – then we all leave with a few more ideas than we started with.

Learning more about Strategic Management and Health Care Entrepreneurship: An Interview with Senior Lecturer Carole Carlson

August 6, 2018 / cmattox / 0 Comments

Carole Carlson is the Director of the Heller School MBA Program, where she also teaches courses on Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship. Below is the transcript from a short interview, in which she provides insight about what to expect in her two courses in the EMBA for Physicians curriculum, Strategic Management and Health Care Entrepreneurship, and how the topics apply to the needs of a practicing physician.

What skills can a physician expect to gain from your classes?

For Strategic Management, you gain an ability to diagnose and understand strategic positioning, both for your organization and its competitors, and an ability to understand and align an organization behind a compelling strategy, which often involves change skills as well as strategic skills. More generally, you gain an understanding of the strategy of your current organization and what the implications are for multiple stakeholders. Strategic thinking is fun because you start to look at the world in a different way. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in a restaurant or in a bookstore or on vacation at a hotel; you’re looking around and thinking about the strategy of that organization. I find that really intriguing. It’s a great way to engage with the world.

The entrepreneurship course is little bit more nuanced. It covers how to take an idea from the idea stage to implementation and also how to stop wasting time on bad ideas. If you asked a group of physicians, “Who wants to be an entrepreneur?” some would put their hands up. If you asked, “Who knows how to be an entrepreneur?” if people are telling the truth, almost no one would put up a hand. It makes sense to understand that process and whether it’s right or wrong for you. Another thing that I found really resonates with physicians in my classes: There’s a lot of issues around founding and cofounding. People don’t tend to become entrepreneurs solo. Thinking through the dilemmas that can arise around cofounders is actually really valuable because if people are pursuing a strictly or narrowly entrepreneurial path, they are typically not going to do it alone. They need to think through these things in order to be able to make it a successful experience.

How can an understanding of both Strategic Management and Health Care Entrepreneurship help physicians in their professional lives?

For Strategic Management, in my experience, the physicians that are attracted to our program want to have a broader impact in their organizations. To do that successfully, it is critical to be able to both understand and promote your organization’s strategy. On the entrepreneurship side, I don’t think you can be an effective leader without having some entrepreneurial skills. Even if you’re not interested in starting a venture, your ability to lead like an entrepreneur, look for new opportunities, articulate them, and help the organization see them is essential. People have different mixes of those skills, depending on their professional situation, but I think both are fundamental building blocks to be a more impactful leader in health care today.

What can you expect during your classes?

In class, you can expect a little bit of up front lecture and then a discussion using the case method, which, if you haven’t done it, is really engaging. It’s an exciting way to think about protagonists in challenging situations, often in health care organizations. For example, this month we are discussing a company that is commercializing a blood substitute product and one that is innovating in portable ultrasound. We also discussed Netflix: their strategy and how they think about effectively managing through turbulent markets. Those are highly interactive discussions that involve the whole class. Sometimes we get a little excited during these discussions, but at the end of the class, the participants have found that they have thought deeply about how that organization might improve. That type of learning is very intense, but there is a really high level of retention and understanding and you get some fantastic insights through the debate and discussion. Finally, the third part of the class is how those insights relate to program participants in their careers and how they might apply the ideas we discussed to their organizations.

Learning more about Financial and Managerial Accounting: An Interview with Dr. Brenda Anderson

July 11, 2018 / cmattox / 0 Comments

This blog is the first in our series where we interview professors from the Executive MBA for Physicians program about their courses: both their content and their value for a busy, practicing physician. Dr. Brenda Anderson teaches at both The Heller School for Social Policy and Management and the International Business School at Brandeis University. She has also taught at the University of South Wales, Sydney, Northeastern University, and Boston University. Prior to entering academia, Dr. Anderson worked as an auditor for KPMG Peat Marwick and is a Certified Public Accountant.

Below is the transcript from a short interview, where Dr. Anderson provides insight about her two courses in the EMBA for Physicians curriculum: Financial Accounting and Managerial Accounting.

You teach both Financial Accounting and Managerial Accounting. What are the primary differences between these two courses?

I think it best to employ a health care context in answering this question. While not perfect, I believe this analogy from a clinician’s perspective will quickly capture the essence of the difference between the two courses.

In the examination of a patient presenting symptoms of a medical condition, the physician might look at the patient’s external appearance and current health status to make some type of initial assessment. The first accounting course in the EMBA curriculum, Financial Accounting, is similar to this context in that it addresses how external parties, such as creditors, investors, and regulatory bodies, process information about an economic entity to assess its financial well-being or “health status.” A standard set of financial statements that includes a balance sheet and an income statement are disseminated to these external decision makers for this purpose. The balance sheet tells a story about what the organization owns (assets) and its obligations (liabilities) as well as providing information on owner contributed resources and accumulated profits (equity). This “story” is reported as of a single date in time and, in sum, describes the entity’s financial position. The income statement or statement of operations conveys information about how the organization has performed over an accounting period. It presents the amount of services or goods delivered and matches this “revenue” against resources used in this delivery to measure performance, or in accounting terms, net earnings. Thus, Financial Accounting is a course focused on external financial reporting.

Returning to our patient assessment example, Managerial Accounting would be akin to having the clinician examine diagnostic test results that provide insights as to what is going on internally with the patient so that a medical course of action can be planned going forward. Essentially, Managerial Accounting is a course that focuses on providing decision makers within the organization with information and results of diagnostic tools that will allow them to assess, control and strategically guide the entity.

As this course evolves, the focus is on learning about cost identification, overhead allocation, cost behavior, and how the nature of such behavior impacts net earnings or profits. Critical topics such as break-even and target profit analysis, budgeting, outsourcing and long term project evaluation, such as launching a new service line or opening an ASC, are also examined.

What skills can a physician expect to gain from your class?

Admittedly, I am most certainly biased and steadfast in my beliefs about the critical nature of financial literacy skills. That said, frequent reactions to my class sessions or executive education sessions with physician groups can be summarized as follows.

I no longer fear the financial people in my organization.
The administrators in my organization are continually talking about margins and overhead allocation. I finally understand their language!
I am actually beginning to enjoy learning this stuff but don’t tell anyone.
Thank you for teaching us – this is exactly the skillset that I need.

Within such comments, you can hear a very genuine, explicit “thirst” for this content. Physicians truly believe acquisition of knowledge in the areas of finance and accounting is tremendously empowering.

At the completion of the two courses, you will be able to read, interpret and analyze a standard set of financial statements – balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flows. You will have an excellent working knowledge of the origins of each line item on these financials because we build our own set of start up financial statements together in class and use this as a learning platform for the remainder of the course.

I firmly believe, “If you build it, they will come.”

Further, you will be able to understand the nature of product and service cost measurement and behavior, analyze costs using cost/volume/profit analysis, employ a number of cost allocation techniques, analyze a variety of short term business problems (outsourcing, special orders, etc.) using differential cost approaches, evaluate the costs/benefits associated with capital budgeting, and prepare, analyze and interpret budgets and variance analysis reports.

When all is said and done, you will have a full and overflowing toolkit from which to draw upon when faced with a wide range of financial analysis and decision tasks within your health care organization.

The EMBA for Physicians’ Curriculum: Learning more about the courses

June 13, 2018 / cmattox / 0 Comments

Below are brief descriptions of the classes in our curriculum, designed for you to scan and read summaries of the classes you are curious about. For more in depth information about specific classes, please refer to the professor interviews in our blog series, or reach out to our team at hellerpemba@brandeis.edu.

Clinical and Managerial Uncertainty, Data, and Judgment – Studies how people make decisions. When people make decisions, they draw on data, models (mental or formal), and goals that are shaped by their own experiences and the contexts in which they are immersed. Decision making often suffers when situations include uncertainty, dynamically complex problems, high stakes, and time and performance pressures. We will look for connections between how people make decisions and the organizational outcomes we experience. The course introduces the tools of systems thinking for modeling and analyzing organizational policy and strategy.

Conflict Resolution by Negotiation – Develops in students an understanding of the nature, advantages, and limitations of negotiations as a conflict resolution tool. Provides a normative and practical framework for pursuing a negotiation strategy as a method of resolving disputes. Provides students with opportunities to apply this knowledge in a variety of simulated negotiation contexts. Finally, exposes students to feedback regarding their negotiation approaches.

Corporate Finance I and II – Analyzes the major issues affecting the financial policy of a modern corporation and develops greater depth of financial skills and logical thought processes necessary to formulate and implement business decisions. Reviews foundational theoretical concepts before going on to discuss real-life cases dealing with major issues, such as firm valuation, capital structure and security issuances, payout policies, and corporate restructuring. These issues are central to the investment, financing, and strategic policy decisions facing financial managers.

Economic Analysis for Physicians as Managers – Introduces tools of economics that can be used for managerial decision making in the health sector. A framework based on optimization of objectives will enable us to organize information concerning input costs, the market for output, and technology. We will consider the economics of supply and production, consumer demand, and market power and examine health policy initiatives that attempt to change managerial and consumer incentives to change market outcomes.

Executive Team Consulting Project – For an in depth description of this class, see our previous blog: Making the Most of Your EMBA: The Executive Team Consulting Project – From Real Learning to Real Life

Financial Accounting – Develops a fundamental understanding of financial accounting and reporting issues as they apply to nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Students will acquire skills enabling them to read and analyze the statement of earnings, balance sheet and statement of cash flows. Accounting practices that are unique to nonprofits will be introduced, discussed and differentiated from those practices employed by for profit enterprises. Students will examine financial statements from organizations such as hospitals, large and small non-profits, retailers and manufacturers. The course emphasizes how accounting information, in a variety of organizational settings, can be utilized by decision makers.

Health Care Entrepreneurship – Enables students to master the fundamentals of entrepreneurship. It explores how entrepreneurship has become a driving force in the healthcare sector, provides tools for developing and evaluating new ventures, and explores the blurring line between for profit and non-profit social initiatives. The course is designed to provide an intellectual and practical framework for students interested in exercising their entrepreneurial energy to solve problems in healthcare and explores the process of launching a new venture, particularly in the healthcare sector.

Healthcare Technology and Information – Discusses the role of science and technology in healthcare settings. Through case studies of technology companies (pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device, and information technology), the class examines how firms manage the creation, development, adoption, and spread of medical innovations in the context of a cost-constrained marketplace. The class uses current academic literature and newspaper articles to discuss how hospitals, insurers, and federal agencies can affect technological progress.

Health Law and Ethics – Introduces students to patient care and liability issues within the context of the U.S. healthcare delivery system. The course will cover legal and ethical aspects of: 1.) the provider/patient relationship and liability; 2.) healthcare quality, cost, and access; 3.) relationships between physicians and organizations; 4.) insurance, healthcare delivery systems, regulation, and the Affordable Care Act.

Leadership and Organizational Behavior – Focuses on leadership and managing organizations. Uses cases on a variety of organizations to expose students to problems and to improve their effectiveness in analyzing, diagnosing, and leading people in organizations. Students learn organizational concepts, analytic frameworks, and models, and practice their leadership skills in class. Uses case discussions, simulations, role-playing, mini-lecturing, and experimental exercises.

Leadership Coaching – For an in depth description of this class, see our previous blog: Making the most of your EMBA: Leadership Coaching

Management of Healthcare Organizations – Introduces students to the concepts, theories, and practical problems of managing people in healthcare organizations. Case material is drawn from hospital, HMO, group practice, public health agency, and for-profit company settings. Students gain a better understanding of the range of strategic and operational problems faced by managers, some of the analytic tools to diagnose problems, and the role of leadership (and management) in improving performance.

Managerial Accounting – Provides general introduction to the concepts, problems, and issues related to managerial accounting. Managerial accounting predominantly addresses the internal use of economic information regarding the resources used in the process of producing goods and providing services. Fundamental aspects of cost behavior and cost accounting will be discussed, but always from the perspective of the manager who must make decisions rather than the accountant who prepares the information.

Marketing – Provides students with an in-depth understanding of the key concepts of marketing and applying them to product and service applications as well as to for-profit and not-for-profit organizations and companies in the health sector. This course is also designed to provide an opportunity for participants collectively to analyze and solve complex marketing problems and to explore, through the study of the marketing of health-related services, the interrelationship between marketing, operations, human resources, information systems, and finance.

National Health Policy – An overview of the U.S. healthcare system is followed by a critical analysis of the major issues and trends in the healthcare field. Concentrates on the activities of federal and state governments and the private sector. Also explores likely future issues affecting our health system. Of special concern is the issue of the large number of Americans with no or inadequate health insurance. A related problem is the rising cost of medical care, which results in increases in the number of uninsured.

Operations Management – Addresses healthcare operations, which is the management of interconnected processes or systems which facilitate diagnosis, treatment, payment, physician education, and administrative tasks. Uses concepts and tools from management science, decision support, and the science of systems as well as the organization’s strategy to determine the most efficient and optimal methods to support patient care delivery. The course covers several main topics: process analysis, process improvement (which includes patient safety), inventory management, and linear programming.

Quality and Performance Measurement in Health Care – A conceptual and analytic framework of the field of quality of healthcare, which includes quality improvement and performance measurement; understanding of the contemporary research and policy initiatives that relate to quality of healthcare; and insights into the ways that quality relates to issues of provider payment, organization of healthcare facilities, and costs of and access to healthcare. By the end, students should have an understanding of the centrality of quality of care issues in contemporary health services research, healthcare policy, and management of healthcare organizations.

Relational Coordination Masterclass – Students will learn about relational coordination—and its impact on quality, safety, efficiency, employee well-being, learning, and innovation. Students will learn how to analyze work processes that pose a coordination challenge, mapping out the current state of relational coordination, and assessing areas of strength and areas in need of improvement. Students will learn how to diagnose these structures that weaken or strengthen relational coordination. Moving from analysis to action, students engage with key stakeholders regarding a coordination challenge in their organization.

State Health Policy – Examines the role of states in the U.S. healthcare system. Provides an overview of state activities in health, including state responsibilities for managing health programs and institutions. Outlines and explores the policy and legislative processes. States’ efforts to reform their healthcare systems are discussed with special attention to implementation issues, barriers, limits of state action, and prospects for the future of state health reform.

Strategic Management – In an increasingly complex and dynamic healthcare environment, physician leaders are constantly called upon to both set strategies for their organizations and ensure effective implementation. This course covers the fundamentals of both strategy development and strategy execution as it applies to healthcare organizations. Using cases from a variety of sectors, we will explore core strategy frameworks and then examine the requirements for effective implementation.

Making the Most of Your EMBA: The Executive Team Consulting Project – From Real Learning to Real Life

December 7, 2017 / cmattox / 0 Comments

By: Sally Ourieff, MD
Lecturer and Faculty for the Executive Team Consulting Project

Program Director Dr. Jon Chilingerian aptly describes the Heller School’s Executive MBA (EMBA) for Physicians curriculum as teaching “at the nexus of medicine and management science.” As an EMBA for Physicians student, you learn a great deal about the science of management. In your Executive Team Consulting Project (ETCP), you learn the “art” of applying that new knowledge in the real world. In the process, you will face tough challenges and have to solve interesting problems. You will also discover, however, the best in yourself and your colleagues and have some fun along the way.

The goal of the ETCP is for each student to launch, lead, and work with a team of their colleagues to complete a change initiative that impacts an aspect of their own work in health care. This could be a problem that needs to be solved or an opportunity that can be leveraged. It can relate to anything from service delivery, organizational effectiveness, or quality, safety and performance metrics, to a clinical innovation, cost savings, patient education, or access to care. It can be any issue that you believe needs to be addressed and will make a difference for those with whom you work or serve.

One of the first challenges is choosing the right project. The project spans the entire 16 months of the program and culminates with a paper and poster presentation in the 4th and final semester. You will spend a lot of time on this so choose something you are genuinely interested in and care about. It should, however, also be important to your organization, leaders, and colleagues. It is hard to rally a team to implement an idea you love but no one else thinks is valuable! It should be ambitious but doable; require a team but not overburden them; enable you to grow as a leader but empower your team to lead as well; tie-in specific learning but push you to learn new things. In the end, the ETCP prepares you to return to your life post-MBA with a proven record of implementing a successful change initiative that made a difference. I will provide you with lots of support, as will the entire faculty. We are here to help you succeed. Most importantly, you will have each other as your most dedicated support network.

We have had very positive feedback on this project experience. Students have told us that it is one of the best aspects of the program, and they welcomed the opportunity to implement a major project in their own institution. They also appreciated hearing about all the work their classmates had been doing throughout the semester. According to one student, “I learned 35 different approaches to project management and leadership.” The ETCP brings to life all the facets of your learning. There is a lot to look forward to.

Executive MBA for Physicians Blog

Educating physician leaders in the new science of medicine and management