Core Courses

This course focuses on the definition and measurement of population health. This course examines how biological, psychological, and social factors influence health, how unjust variation contributes to health disparities, and how organizations and systems can be enhanced to improve the overall health of populations, as well as individual lives.

This course equips students with the fundamentals of financial and managerial (cost) accounting. In the first part of the course, students will learn how to prepare, read, interpret, analyze, and forecast the financial statements of for profit and not-for-profit healthcare organizations. The second part of the course focuses on using accounting for planning and control.  We will cover cost accounting, budgeting, and decision-making.

In this course, students will learn the financial skills necessary to make effective budgeting and capital investment decisions for healthcare organizations. Concepts include the cost of capital, reimbursement methodologies, interpretation of financial reports, valuation, and methods for financing investments.

Successfully managing people and teams in health care requires an inclusive environment that supports learning and innovation, fosters collaboration, and can flexibly respond to the uncertain and interdependent nature of the work. This course will build competence with a variety of concepts and skills, such as building trust, managing conflict, understanding power and influence, developing teams, creating organizational culture, managing change, and engaging community. We will link individual, team, and organizational performance with workforce well-being and health care outcomes.

This course introduces economic concepts as applied to the current health care landscape and future policy options. This course will review and examine economic evaluations of health interventions and the supply and demand of health care in the context of the U.S. health care system. Students will establish an economic basis for sound managerial decision-making, so that they can apply economics to their world and make good decisions for themselves and their organization.

This course teaches the measurement of healthcare quality with the goal to improve patient safety, health outcomes, equity, and the patient experience. Students will learn evidence-based methods for continuous quality improvement and practical approaches for implementing these methods.

Data analytics can improve decision-making in healthcare. This course will cover the fundamental components of healthcare data analysis including: types of healthcare data, data collection and storage, healthcare data privacy rules and regulations, key metrics across different healthcare domains, design principles of data visualization and communication of results, data analysis methods and uses of predictive analytics and emerging technologies in the healthcare industry.

The Capstone is among the most longitudinal, independent, and self-directed learning experiences in the MHA program. The Capstone is a culminating, experiential learning project in which students partner with a field-based host site in a “consultant-like” role to analyze a defined problem, gap, dilemma, or need identified by the site. Projects serve a mutually beneficial purpose, allowing the student to practice personal & professional accountability, leadership, and social responsibility in a supervised setting while developing an actionable, feasible project plan inclusive of multiple components (e.g., financial analysis, operations, strategic planning, etc.) and a final recommendation for the partner site. In addition to the final project plan, students demonstrate effective communication through a final presentation, and they have opportunities to understand and evaluate their own learning and performance through a final reflection.  

Though the Capstone course occurs in the final Spring term of their program, students begin preparing for the Capstone approximately nine months prior. With faculty guidance, students spend Summer & Fall terms exploring their own professional interests and identifying potential health administrative settings that may meet their personal goals. Once a host site and client preceptor are identified, students spend Winter term co-developing a Scope of Work. The 6-week Capstone course in the Spring term is dedicated to project implementation, with ~15 hours/week spent working for and with the host site. Course Directors and Client Preceptors provide individualized mentorship, coaching, and supervision. The Capstone encourages students to practice self-reflection about professional strength and growth domains, flexibility and responsiveness to external resources and limitations, and effective communication and strategic thinking.

View an introductory video on the course here.

Through this course, students will build an understanding of organizations as complex systems and the critical role of leaders in managing that system for organizational effectiveness.  We will explore the important roles of organizational culture and informal networks of interpersonal relationships, both for leaders with significant formal authority and for emerging leaders at all levels.

This practically oriented course teaches concepts and techniques for improving organizational performance - process flow, capacity analysis, queuing, inventory management, and service design.

This applied strategy course teaches a process toolkit: key ideas, concepts, and tools for developing strategic goals, ensuring buy-in from key constituents, and laying the groundwork for successful implementation.

Healthcare organizational ethics is situated at the intersection of clinical, public health and business ethics. Following an analysis of relevant ethical codes, common mission elements and values, students will apply an ethical decision making framework in the exploration of commonly experienced challenges in the administration of today’s health care organizations. Embracing a learning health system approach, evaluation methodologies for derived decisions will be designed, and the potential for preventive approaches will be considered. The opportunity to role-play an organizational ethics committee will provide students the chance to appraise and defend various perspectives and choices, and draw conclusions for simulated cases. Students will reflect upon their learning by creating a personal statement that illustrates how they might envision using the material from this course in their future career to build organizational ethics capability and competence. 

Communication is the key to success in any field, whether you want to impress a potential employer during a job interview, pitch a project, deliver a presentation or collaborate with a team. In this course, students will learn essential skills and techniques of professional communication, including delivery behaviors, slide design and persuasive presentations. Students will learn how to tailor communications to different situations, contexts and audiences, as well as how to use feedback from others to improve their communication objectives.

This course introduces students to the organization of the U.S. and comparative health systems. It covers fundamental policies that determine financing, organization, delivery, and oversight while emphasizing systems thinking and payment systems.

In the rapidly evolving field of health care, negotiation is a crucial skill for securing agreements and driving meaningful improvements. This applied course, tailored for health care leaders, delves into the art and science of negotiation, addressing key questions such as preparing for diverse negotiation contexts, managing tough tactics, and aligning multiple parties. This course equips students with collaborative techniques for engaging internal and external stakeholders, building productive relationships, and enhancing their conflict management skills. Through experiential learning, including role-play simulations, students will practice and refine their negotiation abilities in real-world health care scenarios, preparing students to tackle systemic issues they will encounter in their careers.  Aligned with the Masters in Health Administration program's vision of innovation, accessibility, and transformation, this course provides a crucial tool for leading transformative changes that improve health care delivery. Graduates will be well-equipped to navigate complex negotiations, influence outcomes, and make a meaningful impact on the populations they serve.

Spreadsheets are pervasive in organizations. Adapting existing and designing new spreadsheets at an appropriate level of detail is a craft skill that develops along several dimensions: awareness of what is possible, appreciation for spreadsheet design choices, and ability to execute.

This course teaches how to use Excel spreadsheets to work with health administration data and business logic. We will organize, analyze, and display health administration data. We will also represent financial relationships and business logic to support managerial decision making. The goal is to generate order and insight from complex situations. This short course provides an analytical foundation that other courses will further develop.

In this design thinking experience, students will gather and interpret information from patients and other stakeholders to understand their needs; they will then apply these insights to design successful innovations in health care.

This course aims to equip students with the expertise to critically evaluate and synthesize research findings, enabling them to make informed decisions, contribute to the advancement of knowledge in their field, and prepare for further research or professional pursuits.

This course prepares students for leadership roles in project-driven organizations, equipping them with the necessary skills to deliver projects successfully while meeting objectives, constraints, and stakeholder expectations. 

Through applied learning experiences, students will discover and practice teamwork concepts and build community with their cohort of classmates.

John Wennberg's pioneering work in the 1970s that revealed unexplained differences in how medicine was practiced in different geographies put Dartmouth in the center of the debate of what a health care system should do and how it can be designed to deliver that outcome. This course will teach students about the causes of variation in health care delivery as well as some tools to help move investments in care towards more productive measures and outcomes.