Flexible MBA Specialization in Healthcare Management, Innovation, and Technology

Add a specialization in Health Management, Innovation, and Technology.

The healthcare sector is large, diverse, and growing around the world. It currently accounts for almost one fifth of total U.S. gross domestic product. Demographic changes, such as aging populations, technology breakthroughs that prolong and improve the quality of life, and global challenges, including  pandemics and global warming, pose challenges and create unique opportunities for health care leaders and innovators.

Because of this rapid growth, health systems need constant adaptation to confront fast-evolving regulatory and public health environments. And health technology has seen a steady source of rapid innovation in the clinical, delivery, and health finance fields. Harnessing these innovations and staying ahead of the curve is paramount to your success as a leader.

The Healthcare Management, Innovation, and Technology specialization at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School opens up Johns Hopkins’ vast networks — exposing you to the experts, knowledge, and practices available only at a world-leading medical school and health innovator.

MBA Healthcare Management Curriculum Highlights

Required Courses

BU.881.702 Frameworks for Analyzing Health Care Markets (2 Credits)

This course introduces you to basic economic concepts and the language used to analyze market structure, conduct, and performance, as well as nonmonetary outcomes including health outcomes and distributional issues. You will learn to discuss system changes and challenges faced by health care providers and patients, facility managers, insurers, and product manufacturers. Lectures and cases explore the drivers of costs, prices, access, innovation, and outcomes.

BU.881.706 Health Innovation and Evaluation (2 Credits) or can be used as elective if not chosen as second required course

This course focuses on emerging models of health care provision, including the role of information technology, mobile technologies, point-of-care diagnostics on a chip, health care at home, telemedicine, and technology-mediated innovations in health care for both consumers and providers. The course discusses various models of evaluation and how health care innovation is valued, funded, and commercialized.

BU.883.702 Health Information Technology (2 Credits) or can be used as elective if not chosen as second required course

This course examines health care organizations from the perspective of managing the information systems that exist within the enterprise. Identifying the clinical and health care delivery processes and how they relate to information systems is the main focus. The course aims to determine key issues confronting the management of today’s health care information systems and health care organizations, examine their causes, and develop reasonable solutions to these issues. Specific federal regulations, vendor solutions, and financial implications as they relate to health care information systems are also examined.

Electives

BU.150.710 Discovery to Market I (2 Credits) and BU.150.715 Discovery to Market II (2 Credits)

This course teaches the process of bringing scientific discoveries to market. Learn about innovation and invention processes, how to identify opportunities, the steps required to bring a product to market, including intellectual property protection and regulatory processes, and strategies to license early stage inventions to third parties for further development. Work in small teams on early-stage invention projects that are patented or patent pending, sourced by an instructor from university and government technology transfer offices. Analyze the feasibility of commercializing the invention so that it can be licensed to a third party that can pursue entrepreneurial funding and development.

BU.881.701 Fundamentals of Health Care Systems (2 Credits)

Nationally organized health systems around the world seek to ensure comprehensive access to health services, improve the quality of care, and contain the growth of health care expenditures. This course provides an overview and synthesis of the four major models of national health systems in five different countries, as well as the challenges and opportunities for developing and strengthening these systems to maximize population health and the market dynamics for health care products and services under these different models.

BU.883.705 Health Care Financing and Financial Management (2 Credits)

This course covers the analysis of the major financial decisions of corporations in the health care industry and the application of techniques of corporate finance in the health care industry. Financial and operating decisions in the health care industry are discussed, as are the valuation of profitability and cost performance of service and product lines, the impact of cost containment and competition on hospitals and integrated delivery systems and other providers, modeling of cost drivers in health care including cost and production functions, cost accounting systems, and the concept of price and value. This course also covers managed care and risk management in relation to the relative roles of private sector and public sector insurance and providers, along with the effect of delivery system design on cost, quality, and efficiency and equity. Topics related to the payment for the elderly, the poor, medically indigent, and the underinsured are also discussed. Finally, innovations such as insurance exchanges and changing models of employer self-insurance are explored.

BU.881.703 Health Care Law and Regulation (2 Credits)

This course provides you with an overview of the legal environment as it affects medicine and business. Cutting-edge cases are utilized as you explore medical malpractice; negligence; liability (physician, product, and corporate); criminal aspects of health care, including fraud and abuse; patient consent and right; and the current state of health care reform.

BU.883.706 Health Care Organization and Management (2 Credits)

The overall goal of the course is to increase your understanding of managing individuals and teams. These tools are essential to improve operations and consumer outcomes. The specific aims of the course are to enable students to learn theories and concepts in organization behavior and health care management; integrate theories with real world situations; learn to understand perspectives and value of health care management; and develop the ability to work productively with diverse teams. You will build the knowledge and skills to analyze strategic issues in health care organizations. Topics discussed include management styles, performance improvement, culture, change, and leadership. We will draw on several sources to meet the course objectives, including conceptual and experiential approaches, case studies, role playing, and other exercises.

BU.890.713 Health Care Strategy Consulting Practicum I (2 Credits) and BU.890.714 Health Care Strategy Consulting Practicum II (2 Credits) 

Practicum I: This course is the first part of a two-part course. It examines business strategies for health care industries and services, and prepares you to assume the role of a consultant or decision maker in a complex organization while managing through tremendous complexity, uncertainty, and inadequate information. The focus throughout is on strategic management — the process of choosing and defining purposes and objectives, formulating and implementing a viable strategy, and monitoring strategic performance. Strategic tools such as SWOT, PESTLE, and Competitive Analysis are covered and practiced in class as they relate to contemporary health care organizations’ strategies. The emphasis is on the kinds of problems and issues that affect the success of the entire organization.

Practicum II: This course is the second part of a two-part course. Assist a client organization (business or non-profit) in addressing existing and emerging challenges in the health care industry. These clients may be domestic or international.

BU.881.705 Health Marketing and Access (2 Credits)

This course focuses on how standard marketing techniques do, and do not, apply within the health sector, which poses several important constraints and challenges. You will explore the implications of these for marketing analysis, tactics, and strategy. You will review existing applied work within the topic area of health care marketing and by leveraging your experiences in this sector. The main topics covered include product, pricing, distribution, and communications to patients, providers, and external stakeholders, such as regulators and nongovernmental organizations. Other topics of discussion include the role of marketing to encourage access; pricing as an element of decisions on access; and the role of marketing communication to foster community health.

BU.883.703 Medical Devices and Diagnostics (2 Credits)

The goal of this course is to provide the latest market trends and industry analysis for products, services, and technologies in the medical device and diagnostics industry, as well as an assessment of market needs in the context of changing global demographics. The course discusses the barriers to and triggers for innovation with reference to the role of culture, regulation, cost effectiveness, and appropriate pricing. You are introduced to medical device innovations across various geographic markets and industry sectors.

BU.883.708 Negotiation in Health Care Settings (2 Credits) 

Negotiating successful agreements in today’s health care environment presents a formidable challenge for health care professionals. In a world of managed care, hospital physician integration, and multi-institutional mergers, members of the health care profession are faced with creating agreement in which the complex services of health care can be delivered in a coordinated and financially viable fashion. To meet this challenge, health care professionals must develop negotiating skills that can achieve mutually beneficial, value-added agreements. This course will provide you with the basic knowledge and applied skills to negotiate in a wide array of health care settings. The first part of the course focuses on understanding and systematically preparing for the structuring and executing of increasingly complex negotiations involving administrators, insurers, patients, and providers. The second part of the course extends these basic principles to a variety of health care settings, including group negotiations, agency relationships, and conflict resolution.

BU.883.704 Pharmaceutical Strategy (2 Credits)*

Based on an overview of scientific, clinical, legal, financial, and ethical perspectives, this course focuses on new strategic developments in the pharmaceutical industry. Topics covered include business strategies in research and development, intellectual property, clinical trials and getting approval from regulatory bodies, pricing, reimbursement, and marketing in the pharmaceutical industry. It explores fast-evolving market models for innovation in the pharmaceutical industry in the context of changing global demographics.

*This course assumes students have basic knowledge of the U.S. health care system through previous work or course experience and/or BU.550.620.

BU.881.704 Providers and Payers (2 Credits)

This course focuses on strategies and tactics for provider networks and payers to manage resource constraints as well as insurance and reimbursement issues in order to deliver ethical and efficient care. Interactions between providers and payers are a critical topic, along with how these interactions lead to changes in health care provision and policy change.

BU.550.620 The U.S. Health Care System: Past, Present, and Future (2 Credits)

This course provides an overview of the health care delivery system in the U.S. It explores the drivers of change over time that shape the organization and delivery of health care services and opportunities for innovation and improvements in the cost, quality, and access dimensions of those services. The course considers the paradox of the U.S. health care delivery system, and how large expenditures on health care have not resulted in best outcomes, in part because of issues of cost, access, and quality.

BU.883.707 The Wire: Business Solutions for Community Health Improvement (2 Credits)

This course provides students with the opportunity to study the intersection of business and humanity. The course uses Baltimore as a case study of the effects of the long-time economic decline of a city on the health status and quality of life of the people who live in it. We will study social determinants of health and focus on leadership and management strategies to effect change. The fundamentals of creating and managing non-profit (tax-exempt) organizations is incorporated into the course work. You will develop and assess the feasibility of an innovative solution to a health issue inspired by the TV series “The Wire.”