From the August 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
The importance of the health care industry as a factor in the economy, and the large impact that business and finance has on how the U.S. health care system operates, has prompted the University of Pittsburgh to develop and offer a joint program that leads to a combined MHA/MBA degree. The overarching philosophy of this combined program is that future managers and leaders in the organization and delivery of health care services can benefit from the combined expertise of the two schools, blending content knowledge in the organization, financing and measuring of quality and outcomes in health care, with the strong financing, marketing and strategic management expertise of a business school. We are confident that the combination of these competencies and skills are what health care leadership needs, to address the problems facing us today.
I once heard a hospital administrator discussing the financial health of a nonprofit hospital with that hospital’s medical staff, and he said something like, “even though you are a nonprofit, you have to behave like a business. If you have no margin, you have no mission.”
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It’s certainly a mantra often used to justify the application of business strategies to health care. However, if you translate that into manufacturing it would read, “if we don’t make a profit, we don’t have a product,” which is exactly backwards.
If a company doesn’t have a high-quality, competitive product, it will not make a profit, and will not survive.
In health care, what will make an organization successful is the production of high-quality, efficient, cost-effective care. We have created a training program that we believe is a blend of the best of both worlds: strong quantitative and management business skills and deep content knowledge about the quality, financing and reimbursement of our health care system.
About the author: Mark S. Roberts, M.D., MPP is a practicing internist and chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. He has conducted research and cost-effectiveness analyses on many problems in health care, and has served in a senior management role in several health care organizations.Back to HCB News
Dustin Zimmerman
Breakdown
August 02, 2017 08:07
Is there a breakdown of healthcare expenses as it relates to total expenditure? Curious to know the percentage of GDP that is pharmaceutical based .
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