• MBA in Multi-Sector Health Management (MBA-Health)

    21st Century Communities Need Professionals Trained in Medical Leadership

    Physicians have a unique ability to view problems from an alternate perspective using their medical training to come up with real solutions.  An MBA from St. George’s can help graduates:

    • Discover innovative ways to manage medical practices for maximum patient, physician, and staff satisfaction – all while ensuring sustainable profit margins
    • Manage research grants effectively to ensure the most is made of limited funds
    • Identify gaps in medical care practices, develop solutions, and shepherd projects from an idea to a marketable product or service
    • Create business plans to seek funding for innovations in medicine and healthcare delivery with the unique perspective only a physician can bring to understanding patients and their needs
    • Administer hospital or insurance company operations finding ways to improving the overall efficiency and effectiveness of organizational processes

    Graduates of the Multi-Sector Health Management program acquire the skills and knowledge needed to run an efficient and compassionate practice, HMO, or hospital, as well as township, city, state, and country healthcare systems.

    The Best of All Worlds for the Busy Professional

    A 14-month, 34-credit degree program, the MBA in Multi-Sector Health Management is taught primarily online with two separate one-week residencies in Grenada.  Scheduled online classes take place in a virtual classroom allowing professors, course participants and guest speakers to meet and interact.  Students have the opportunity to learn from peers who are established professionals with diverse experiences and backgrounds.

    Program Highlights:

    • A 14-month, 34-credit degree program taught primarily online
    • The program is designed specifically for experienced professionals across all health disciplines who face growing management and executive responsibilities.
    •  Participants will learn to manage multiple aspects of small- to medium-sized organizations, in both the public and private sectors, with special emphasis on international environments.
    • Participants are grouped into cohorts, advancing through the program together to generate actual organizational results through class activities.
    • Distinguished faculty personalize coursework and provide mentoring in core management areas.
    • Curriculum is based on standards set by the Association of MBAs (AMBA) and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).
    • Dual degrees with the Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degrees are offered and provide different start date options for the MBA portion of the program.
    • Two one-week non-consecutive residencies on the academic paradise of Grenada in the Caribbean. St. George’s University has invested in the perfect student-learning environment with a $250+million technologically advanced campus. 

    Curriculum/Required Courses

    Healthy Societies, Organizations, and Leaders in a Changing World - Residency (2 credits)

    This Residency lays the foundation for the "Creating Health… Creating Wealth… for people, organizations, societies and the natural environment"  concept which serves as SGU’s foundation for developing healthy, societies, organizations, and leaders. Here, the global context for creating healthy organizations in the health care industry is examined, where the need to provide high quality, cost-effective health care through healthy organizations and good work has never been greater. By answering the question, “Why would someone follow you?” students are motivated to develop a personal leadership credo and development plan for the program. This course provides the insights needed to successfully build and lead healthy organizations.
    Critical Analytical Thinking for Health Managers (Seminar: 1 credit)
    This course will help students learn and practice skills that transcend any single discipline or function of management. Students explore business issues broadly, while developing analytic and persuasive skills in addressing environmental, organizational, relationship and personal issues that arise in many forms of management. This course will help participants to identify critical questions when exploring a new business issue, to dissect and prioritize issues, to develop reasoned positions, and to make compelling arguments.
    Ethics and Health Management (1 credit Seminar)
    With leadership comes responsibility and a duty to “do the right thing” using an awareness of one’s own and others’ ethical viewpoints. This course explores the numerous ethical duties faced by organizations and managers. Utilizing analytical frameworks and the latest findings on human behavior, you will explore a wide range of ethical decisions and strategies – many with paradoxical and conflicting perspectives. These will help you to reveal and assess your ethical intuitions, assumptions and frameworks, compare them within explicit modes of formal ethical thought, and learn how to use ethics in business scenarios.
    Health Economics (3 credits)
    This course will examine the rapidly changing industry of health care. The course looks at health care as a business commodity and issues such as demand, the role of government in determining policy, provider behavior and competition are explored, providing an understanding of the unique economic complexities of health care. It provides an understanding of the economic principles of scarcity, efficiency, productivity, and market behavior that drive the rapidly changing industry of health care around the world and particularly in the USA. The major components of the health care system are examined, with a focus on topics such as quality v. quantity of health care, care costs v. financing, and social welfare gains v. social welfare losses.
    Health Care Marketing (3 credits)
    Marketing in health care has evolved at a fast pace, requiring health managers to better understand how it is related with consumer behavior, systems, and innovations in delivery, pharmaceutical and medical device industries. Students gain insights into the needs of a broad range of consumers, including the patient, physician managed care providers, and insurance firms, among others. This course covers marketing strategy and research, consumer-based marketing, analysis and implementation techniques and evaluation in light of changing market, policy, social media, and ethical considerations – as well as takes into account cultural implications.
    Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship (3 credits)
    Solving the health care crisis will require innovation across the industry. The issues are many, including the combination of high costs, uneven access and quality of care; growth in health care spending by consumers, governments, and insurance companies; the growing burden of care by hiring firms for their employees and retirees; public health and disease management; growth of the elderly population; the quality and cost of both “fee-for-service” reimbursement and public-provided systems, among others. This course combines the application of concepts, studies, and tools from the fields of innovation and social entrepreneurship to understanding these issues. During this course, students will select the individual or team project to be addressed in the Project Lab course and will be assigned their faculty mentor.
    Comparative Health Systems and Public Policy (3 credits)
    This course involves discussion and analysis of the foundations for global health and health systems and their foundations in policy, economics, human, and cultural subsystems. Challenges and opportunities associated with global health such as the aging population, the electronic medical records and IT, genomics, health care quality and costs are examined as well as the role of NGOs and public/private partnerships in creating transformative change. The course takes a holistic and comparative approach for understanding the systems and nature of health by studying the realities of a number of national health systems
    Health Organizational Strategy, Behavior, and Development (3 credits)

    Learning how to effectively lead, manage, and develop effective organizational systems in the health sector, are critical skills required of successful managers. By examining traditional, modern, and post-modern theories of the organization, students are able to discuss, compare and contrast a rich set of topics related to organizational behavior and dynamics, including motivation, learning, group dynamics, team building, power and politics, conflict, and interpersonal relations. Through experiential learning, participants explore the role of leadership in organizational transformation and decision making within firms differing in culture, values, and ethical foundations. 
    Financial Accounting and Managerial Finance (3 credits)

    This course explores how financial management affects decisions in health care. Classical and emerging analytical methods applied to the financing, investment and operational components of health care delivery are presented. An overview of the organization of financial management in health care, revenue sources, cost accounting and analysis, the setting of care rates, and capital management practices are also covered. Planning and budgeting for optimal health management are introduced in the framework of current health policies and reforms.
    Effective Human Resource Management in the Health Environment (2 credits)
    In today’s knowledge and service era, people – or human capital - have become the most critical resource in organizations, in both emerging and advanced economies.  Human Resource Management (HRM) includes developing individual talent as well as the organizational capability to create future leaders and sustainable, long term success and to achieve better outcomes from and access to health care around the world as well as improved health care models. This course will help you to gain critical knowledge for creating value through people, addressing topics such as critiquing and reinventing existing HRM systems; recruiting, hiring and developing talent; ; developing managers and leaders; organizational practices; managing talent and performance; information and decision making tools; and managing change.
    Strategy and Strategic Decision Making (3 credits)
    Strategy is the heart of business performance, yet a strategy is difficult to develop and even harder to implement.  This course looks at how firms in the health care industry formulate and implement business strategies that create value in their local, as well as global market places. Utilizing a number of health sector studies and well-tested frameworks, students learn the key ingredients of strategy, think through challenges, develop the capacity to provide alternative and anticipated impacts, and gain lessons they may apply to their own organizations. Exercises and training in strategic decision making allows students to learn and apply advanced strategic thinking skills.
    Health Information Management (2 credits)
    The intersection of information science, computer science, and health care creates an interdisciplinary arena. This provides a context for dealing with the resources, devices, and methods required to optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information in health and biomedicine. Health informatics tools include not only computers but also clinical guidelines, formal medical terminologies, and information and communication systems. The managerial application of concepts prepares the participants as managers and consultants to rely upon and manage information technology to accomplish their objectives. The course provides both an overview of technology solutions and discussion of the latest trends in healthcare informatics, including: Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Personal Health Records (PHR), clinical information systems, consumer health, Web 2.0 and social media, telemedicine and imaging, privacy and security.
    The Health Professional’s Small Business (2 credits)
    The challenges of running a professional small business or medical/veterinary clinic are many. Owners or lead practitioners oftentimes wear many hats, servicing clients while running the business and meeting cash flow constraints. Through experiential learning, this course provides the foundations for building and running a professional small business or clinic, helping students learn the nuts and bolts of small business success. It covers topics such as computer systems and back office management; work flow processes; customer service; cash flow planning; budgets and priorities; personnel policies, wages, and benefits; marketing and advertising campaigns and measurements; and billing, collections, and insurance management.
    Legal Responsibility and Risk Management (2 credits)
    Business is all about change which is increasing the quantity and quality of opportunities, risks, and legal challenges within the health care industry.  This course emphasizes management’s need to scrutinize stakeholders, manage risk, and integrate law into practice and management activity. Employing law and risk management as a source of strategic advantage, as well as responsibility for the health professional, this course introduces the variety of forces impacting the legal framework and markets of the health care industry. It offers a global and national overview of key rules and regulations affecting health care delivery, risk factors, and risk management strategies and standards.
    Leadership and Management Labs – Residency (1 credit)

    This experiential course brings together all the program learning in a series of business simulations that challenge participants to think through leadership and management challenges and make relevant recommendations and decisions. Participants are asked to reflect on their own leadership and management competence, asking themselves questions such as: How can we best manage ourselves while we make decisions—without perfect information or endless time? How do we maximize the performance of the teams we become part of? What interpersonal skills give us influence? Which interpersonal strengths can propel us to our next promotion? What development areas might impact our leadership and management effectiveness, or prevent our ascension to the executive suite? The Labs are designed for deep self-reflection about what behaviors we choose to use, the consequences of those behaviors, and given choices, how we might be even more productive. Each progressively more difficult Lab session is facilitated by MBA staff, faculty, and experienced SGU alumni, culminating in our final exam – the team-based Executive Challenge