Leadership in Healthcare MBA for Executives Set for August Launch

Starting in August, faculty from the schools of Medicine and Public Health will be joining Yale SOM faculty in welcoming the charter class to Yale MBA for Executives: Leadership in Healthcare. This specialized program’s curriculum integrates rigorous education in management skills with cutting-edge thinking about the latest developments in healthcare: courses such as Economic Analysis, Quality Management, Organizational Design, and Professional Ethics complement Healthcare Economics, Health Law and Policy, Services Marketing for Nonprofits, and Information Technology for Healthcare. The knowledge and skills gained from these classes will be placed in their real-world context through an ongoing Leadership Seminar featuring lectures by prominent practitioners from all aspects of healthcare, and given practical application in a hands-on, project-based Field Studies program.

Response to the Leadership in Healthcare MBA has been enthusiastic, and comes from a professionally and geographically diverse group. Members of the charter class come from research, clinical, entrepreneurial, line management, senior executive, lobbying, marketing, consulting, and strategy roles, and from organizations that range from multi-physician practice groups to large pharmaceuticals companies, from specialty hospitals to regional health plans, from nonprofit foundations and service providers to state government, and from small biotech firms to huge insurance providers. Geographically, the bulk of our charter class will be drawn from a corridor stretching from Boston to Washington, D.C., with a few students coming from farther away. In short, we have more than met our goal of assembling a broad cross-section of the healthcare sector so that students can learn about the challenges facing their peers in other areas of healthcare at the same time they are learning the skills to address their own.

In addition to pioneering a new level of integration between SOM and other parts of Yale, Leadership in Healthcare marks the school’s first foray into the use of online collaborative work environments. Preparatory work has been under way for the past few months on a technology platform that will both facilitate course-related communications and provide an environment where students in remote locations can collaborate on team projects, and students and professors will be using it heavily from the first day of classes.

So the launch of the Leadership in Healthcare MBA is an important initiative on a number of fronts, as well as a serious commitment by the school to an important and troubled sector of the economy. To quote Dr. Howard Forman, one of the program’s co-directors, “The healthcare industry is under mounting pressure to change. With ever-increasing costs, an intensifying public focus on quality and value, and an underlying desire to meet the needs of all segments of our population, the industry needs knowledgeable and creative leaders who can transform healthcare delivery, making it more efficient and providing better care to more people. With Yale’s unparalleled resources and experience in the healthcare management field, the Leadership in Healthcare program is the perfect environment for training those leaders.”