MS Healthcare Analytics and Intelligence Curriculum

This course is designed with an emphasis on applications of analytical tools in healthcare organizations. Combinations of lectures and discussions on different topics important to healthcare finance will enable students to develop analytical skills necessary to solve a variety of financial management problems. After completing this course, students should be able to analyze investment decisions, evaluate different sources of financing projects, analyze cost of capital, understand the issues of reimbursements including physician payments, capitated payments and fee-for-service payments, differences between for-profit and non-profit organizations, taxable and tax-exempt bond issues and their impact on the supply of charity care by non-profit hospitals, and the operations of physicians’ practice.

This course provides strategies, techniques, and best practices to improve unit, organizational, and integrated delivery system performance by applying key concepts from operations and supply chain management to the healthcare context. Topics include the operational implications of current regulatory and reimbursement trends; organizational design and referral patterns; vertical integration and professional services outsourcing; healthcare policies and legal issues related to aligning physicians and hospitals, clinical integration via information technologies (e.g., electronic health records and regional health information exchanges); service process design; quality assurance; managing population health; and project management for healthcare organizations. The objective is to effectively manage information, material and financial exchanges for healthcare provider organizations to improve the quality of services and efficiency.

The health care industry in the United States is one of the most controversial and changing systems in the global economy. In recent years it has transformed into a conglomerate of public and private entities; each with its own agenda, funding sources and place in the market. Topics of discussion will include characteristics of the health care system, public/private sector roles, health care markets, managed care impact, congressional proposals, health policy changes, health care reform strategies, and the role of patients/consumers.

Lean six sigma is an application of the quantitative six sigma quality management techniques within a lean enterprise. The goal is to create an efficient organization that continuously reduces waste and operates at the most efficient levels possible. In addition to covering the fundamentals of Lean and Six Sigma, this course will equip students with other important tools and strategies to improve the performance of business processes.  Students will practice solving business problems and improving processes through case studies, team exercises and simulations, self-assessments, and guest lectures.  Topics covered will include: six sigma improvement methodology and tools, lean manufacturing tools and approaches, dashboards and other business improvement techniques.  Students will also gain an understanding of: the strategic importance of business improvement, the need for fact based management, the significance of change management, and how to deploy these tools in different parts of the value chain.

One of the most critical elements in the competitiveness and growth of organizations is project management. Projects are the drivers of innovation and change and no organization can survive today without the successful completion of projects. Furthermore, almost every MBA graduate may sooner or later be required to manage a project. This course will present the classical foundations of project management and introduce students to the world of real life project problems. Upon completion of this course, students will understand the basic concepts and critical factors of initiating, planning, organizing, controlling, and running a project. They will be able to develop a project plan, build a project team and adapt their project management style to the unique project characteristics. Course topics will include: project initiation, project success dimensions, integration, scope, planning, controlling and monitoring, time, cost and risk management, project organization, project teamwork, and project adaptation.

This course introduces statistics as applied to managerial problems. Emphasis is on conceptual understanding as well as conducting statistical analyses. Students learn the limitations and potential of statistics, gain hands-on experience using Excel, as well as comprehensive packages, such as R or SAS. Topics include descriptive statistics, continuous distributions, confidence intervals for means and proportions, and regression. Application areas include finance, operations, and marketing. Introduces the basic concepts of model building and its role in rational decision making. Knowledge of specific modeling techniques, such as linear and nonlinear programming, decision analysis, and simulation, along with some insight into their practical application is acquired. Students are encouraged to take an analytic view of decision making by formalizing trade-offs, specifying constraints, providing for uncertainty, and performing sensitivity analyses. Students form groups to collect and analyze data, and to write and present a final report.

The purpose of this course is to provide students with an understanding of database technology and its application in managing data resources. The conceptual, logical, and physical design of databases will be analyzed. A database management system will be used as a vehicle for illustrating some of the concepts discussed in the course.

Data Analysis and Visualization is worth 3 credits. Course description to be added once available.

The objective of this course is to introduce qualitative and quantitative models and tools to efficiently manage operations for healthcare services and extended healthcare supply chains. Topics include demand forecasting and management; appointment scheduling systems; resource and capacity planning; queuing and managing waiting lines; hospital procurement and Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs); inventory and material management; drug distribution and pharmaceutical supply chains.

This course reviews data sources, data processing, and data analytics models and tools with a focus on care provider performance in cost efficiency, revenue, process, clinical outcomes, and patient safety, and patient experience. Upon completing the course, students should be able to perform business analytics in the above areas. The course will greatly improve the relevance of the healthcare analytics curriculum and also allow students to have hand-on & guided practices of analytics with common data in the healthcare industry.

Prerequisite of Healthcare Operations Analysis (22:799:586) or Business Analytics Programming (22:544:660)

This Optional Practical Training course is available for international students and is worth 0 credits.

In this course, students form teams to work on real life consulting projects provided by healthcare organizations under faculty supervision. The healthcare organization will appoint a senior executive as the contact person for each team and the team will interact with the corresponding organization at least 3 times during the project: initial briefing and data collection, mid-term reporting and final presentation. The course aims to integrate the whole curriculum of the proposed degree program, and build students’ problem solving skills and teamwork skills using real life consulting engagement, thus significantly enhances students’ employability.

Required for full-time students, can be substituted by an additional 3-credit course from analytics core for part-time students (Suggested for final semester)

Our goal in this course is to learn the principles of programming for business analytics using the Python and R programming languages. Programming is the fundamental background skill based on which all Information Systems are built. Even if it is not your goal to become a software developer, it is essential for an MBA graduate with concentration in Analytics and Information Management to possess a working knowledge of programming and fundamental insights into what a programmer does. This course provides you with this essential knowledge.

Prerequisite of 22:544:641

Supply Chain Management Strategies is worth 3 credits. Course description to be added once available.

Prerequisite of Healthcare Operations Analysis (22:799:586)

Organizational Behavior is worth 3 credits. Course description to be added once available.

Service Management is worth 3 credits. Course description to be added once available.

Marketing Management is worth 3 credits. Course description to be added once available.

Pharm Marketing Research is worth 3 credits. Course description to be added once available.

Market Access & Reimbursements for Drugs is worth 3 credits. Course description to be added once available.

Ethics in Pharma is worth 3 credits. Course description to be added once available.

Business Intelligence for Supply Chains and Marketing is worth 3 credits. Course description to be added once available.

Artificial Intelligence for Supply Chain Management is worth 3 credits. Course description to be added once available.

Analytics for Business Intelligence is worth 3 credits. Course description to be added once available.

Community Assessment for Healthcare Administrators (previously Population Health) is worth 3 credits. Course description to be added once available.

Marketing for Health Care Organizations is worth 3 credits. Course description to be added once available.

Python Methodologies is worth 3 credits. Course description to be added once available.