ISP Course 1

In the eleven months that follow the on-campus residential session, students complete the eleven independent study units listed below, the third substitutes an oral presentation at a regional seminar for a written assignment. Each study unit introduces the administrator to the concepts that link theory to practice. The approach derives from and leads to a principle central to adult education: "Learning is the discovery of the personal meaning and relevance of ideas."

Unit 1: Management Process

We begin with the management process as a framework for viewing any organization, including the student' own. While the administrator' job may not include each component of the process, it is his or her job to be sure each component of the process is functioning well within the organization. Management process is introduced as a functional system rather than as the learning of specific technological content areas and is seen as a means to an endómanaging the delivery of health care services which are of high quality, acceptable to patients and clients, accessible and affordableórather than the end itself.

Unit 2: Organizational Behavior

One of the most obvious contributions of education to effective administration is the administrator' development of management and leadership skills. The unit offers a conceptual model for practitioners who choose to be more effective administrators, a model that can be used throughout the administrator' career to adopt or adapt new information theories and ideas. By using leadership as the central focus of the unit and balancing it with organizational behavior, the unit creates a model within which the administrator can analyze new approaches to managing health care.

The first two units took a broad view of organizations, and of the activities and behaviors within organizations. Now, in this unit, the focus is on the role of the healthcare executive. There is no right role, function or style. Role and style are dynamic concepts which change throughout professional careers. The goal of the regional seminar is to encourage administrators to apply the material from the first few units to their own definitions of the roles and functions of the executive and to encourage critical analysis as they examine their current and future roles.

Like all managers, today' hospital and health care administrator spends more time in the process of problem solving and decision making than in any other single category of administrative activity. Like all managers, the health care executive' potential for success is based largely on his/her ability to sort out and solve problems effectively. Institutions teaching graduate administration have adopted particular approaches in teaching. Thus, the methodologies employed by Harvard Business School, Wharton, and Stanford are reasonably well understood and often emulated in other sectors of graduate education. The University of Minnesota has historically placed major emphasis on problem solving from both internal and external perspectives and its technique is emulated around the world. In this unit of study, attention is directed toward a precise method of solving problems and making decisions with objectivity.

Financial Management has the ultimate goal of sound financial decision making; maximizing the financial wealth of the organization' stockholders and ensuring the future financial viability of the firm. These units are designed to help administrators evaluate factors that impact the financial well being of their organizations and to introduce a variety of essential financial management concepts. The administrator who has completed these units will be comfortable with health care financial management terminology and the analytical tools and techniques utilized to evaluate the financial impact of their organization and other health care partners.

Unit 7: Human Resources

When teaching in a "traditional program, the HR instructor challenges the students to try to understand how business is run in the "real world. In ISP the challenge is to provide a curriculum which fulfills the needs of the administrator through a practical application of the materials provided. Human resources is an integrative approach to managing the most important of the resources available to an organization: people, money, materials and markets. Its goal is developing true leadership which provides the ability to cause or determine the circumstances in which achievement can occur.

The Clinicians unit focuses on management issues pertaining to clinicians in ambulatory healthcare organizations. It is organized around four topic areas: recruitment/credentialing of clinicians; charges and reimbursement for professional services; compensation/employment agreements; and strategies for health care managers working with clinicians to meet organizational objectives.

The Nursing unit is designed to provide health care executives with information about vision, values, philosophy, clinical processes, and other key structures that must be in place to yield quality patient care. Patient care delivery systems, standards of care and practice, information systems, and physician and payer relations are among the topics covered.

Unit 9: Productivity and Efficiency

This unit describes the forces that are bringing healthcare performance under scrutiny. It compares conventional quality assurance and the quality control approach to the paradigm of organization-wide process improvement strategies under development in other industrial sectors and among innovative health organizations.

Recognizing that the manager's problem solving ability is limited by the amount of data she or he can access and the ability of the information to meet management needs, this unit is designed to demonstrate the use of structured analysis and information technology in the support of managerial decision making. Objectives include enabling the manager to more effectively apply information technology in the work environment, furthering the understanding of the basic language of decision sciences and information, and recognition of the role of the manager in the design and implementation of the decision models and information systems.

This unit is written for those who wish to guide board deliberation toward the big questions even if some little ones are missed (instead of vice versa). It is written for executives who want a strong board rather than a weak one, but one which demands a strong executive as well. It seeks to create a rational framework of how boards can be, rather than how boards are. It proceeds from broad concepts and imperatives to the concrete, operating parts of excellence in governing. It demonstrates a board process that enables long term thinking, client- as well as taxpayer/donor-focused concern, proper board/staff relating, responsible control without "meddling and the minimization of wasted time and unnecessary actions.In order to accommodate the new administrative roles of ISP students roles that cross program lines and boundaries, several units are scheduled to coincide so that the program content can also cross lines and boundaries. As an example, an administrator of emergency services in a large hospital who is enrolled in the ACA program may decide to take the Hospital Administration financial units .Choice Units