Curriculum
Rigorous Management Curriculum
Our two-year MHA offers you a rigorous management curriculum, unparalleled flexibility in selecting specialized courses based on your evolving and expanding career interests, and practical learning opportunities. We provide graduate level training in accounting, data science and statistics, economics, finance, human resources, marketing, operations, and strategy. Importantly, our core courses in these key areas of management and business disciplines maintain a strong healthcare focus throughout. We provide our students with the healthcare context expertise and quantitative tools to drive insightful, creative, and data-driven decision-making while also building the soft skills needed to successfully lead innovative change in any healthcare organization and industry. Our formal classes are also complemented by a range of practical and specialized learning opportunities, such our practitioner-led intensive courses (PLICs), our colloquium series, our health policy trek to Washington DC, a required summer internship, and our second-year capstone experience that leverages external partnering organizations to allow our students to solve real-world healthcare problems in real-time.
From general business skills to niche health care knowledge, the program has given me the tools and confidence to be successful as I leave Cornell, and has only deepened my passion for the health care field. Not to mention the lifelong friends I made along the way!
– Will Hasapis ’24, Administrative Resident, SCA Health
Teaching and Learning Methods Used in the Sloan Program
We believe that it is important to use some lower-level teaching and learning methods to impart the basics of the health care system and management skills early in the curriculum. Examples would include readings, lectures, class discussions, and guest speakers.
While training future health care leaders, we strive to incorporate as many higher-level teaching and learning methods as possible, especially in courses that are offered later in the program. A number of core courses use higher-level teaching and learning methods extensively, and Sloan faculty are encouraged to use higher-level teaching and learning methods. The Capstone course asks students to blend a broad variety of skills and competencies as they work on an actual consulting project for a client organization. Case studies and team presentations are frequently used in Health Care Finance II and Health Care Strategy, and many courses have assignments that involve teamwork. Some courses, including Practitioner Led Intensive Courses, utilize simulation exercises. Students are asked to engage in reflective learning during the Capstone course via the use of journaling, evaluation of one’s contributions to a team project, and an assessment of the contributions of one’s teammates. Students have opportunities for external field experiences, such as the health care innovation trip to Washington, D.C.
Degree Requirements
Sloan Competencies
All program courses and activities are designed to help a student achieve our core competencies (listed below) which the Sloan Program has identified as crucial to success in the healthcare industry.
Sloan Colloquium Series
Each semester, practicing healthcare executives visit the campus and give lectures, workshops, and seminars. The colloquia provide informal settings where students interact directly with high-level professionals to learn about recent trends, issues, and innovative developments in the industry.
Practitioner-Led Intensive Courses (PLICs)
PLICs are one-credit weekend courses taught by experienced health care executives on a range of topics such as:
- AI in Healthcare Delivery and Business Functions
- Big Data
- Strategic Change
- Supply Chain Management
- Management of Bond Financing
- Operations and Planning of Long Term Care and Senior Living Facilities
- Healthcare Facilities Planning
- Healthcare Supply Chain Management
- Alternative Payments in Healthcare
- Operations and Planning of Collaborative Approaches to Quality, Safety and Service for Patients
Culminating Capstone Course
Working in small teams, second-year students complete a year-long capstone project for a health care organization. These consulting projects offer students an opportunity to synthesize and apply what they have learned to try to solve a real problem for a real client. Recent capstone projects include: developing a hospital’s enterprise-wide AI technology use-case repository, tool and evaluation system, and protype project platform; developing an initiative to help a hospital’s pediatric practice grow patient volume; redesigning physician schedules to improve patient access and throughput at a GI clinic; examining the feasibility of a hospice house; and determining how to allow physician practices to accept cash payments from patients without violating payer contracts.
With our capstones, students integrate their coursework with a year-long capstone course that transforms theory into meaningful practice. Through this work, they partner closely with clients to generate improvements in healthcare, demonstrating both a deep commitment to service and the power of applied knowledge to drive lasting change.
– Nick Fabrizio PhD, Capstone Director
SOME OF OUR RECENT CAPSTONE PARTNERS
