Graduate Certificate in Healthcare Management
The healthcare workforce you entered isn’t the same healthcare you’re determined to lead.
UNE’s Graduate Certificate in Healthcare Management program was designed because healthcare organizations demand leaders who demonstrate competency in change management, a talent for influencing rather than instructing, strategic problem solving, and an instinct for innovative thinking.
Healthcare has and continues to experience periods of unprecedented change and challenge. Healthcare leadership faces the task of doing more with less, meeting the widespread growth of consumerism across patients, keeping pace with rapid gains in healthcare technology advancements, and aiming attention towards population health management among top responsibilities within their roles.
The Graduate Certificate in Healthcare Management prepares you to master the leadership skills and capabilities required to succeed as a healthcare manager and lead your team using best practices in communication, strategy, and collaboration.
4
Courses
Each course has been designed by public health experts & administrators with employer demand in mind.
8
Months to Complete
Gain advanced credentials in one semester, or less, with dedicated coaching & support.
8
Week Course Length
Concentrated learning with ready-to-use skills for healthcare management.
Graduate Certificate Curriculum
The Graduate Certificate in Healthcare Management requires you to complete 12 credit hours of required courses:
This course provides an overview of the history, challenges, and opportunities facing healthcare administrators today. Topics will include the ongoing transition from a pay-for-services model of healthcare delivery to accountable care networks, emerging public health and healthcare partnerships, and the ability to obtain care for vulnerable populations.
This course explores the range of legal and ethical issues facing healthcare administrators and providers. Students will gain expertise analyzing legal and ethical dimensions of healthcare from administrative, clinical, and organizational perspectives. Current issues, as well as perennial conflicts in healthcare law and ethics, will provide real-world case studies for students to research and debate. Throughout the course, students will gain practice integrating core healthcare law and ethics concepts and practices into their leadership approaches to ensuring excellent patient care.
This course explores the challenges and opportunities facing healthcare leaders and organizations in an age of accountable care, and examines the critical role health data and informatics can and should play in the strategic management of healthcare organizations. Using case-based study techniques, students explore practice and system management, strategic planning, and change leadership. Students combine this insight into health leadership with the actionable insight offered through effective health informatics and business intelligence practices, to craft optimal solutions to internal organizational processes and to external business decisions.
Students in the course will examine concepts, theories, and best practices for communication in the professional workplace. The goal of this course is to refine your written, oral and visual communication. Participants in this course will develop strategies to create meaningful communication for a vast audience. Students will enhance their skills in natural and scholarly writing, oral presentation, and visual demonstrations.
All courses are graduate-level and taught in eight-week terms, allowing you to take two courses each term. The Healthcare Management certificate is two semesters in length, which is the time equivalent of eight months (presuming you choose to take a regular course load consisting of one course each eight-week term, two courses per semester).
To accelerate earning your certificate, you may complete the program in four to six months by taking more than one course each eight-week term.
Choose your own start time
Earning your Graduate Certificate in Healthcare Management can fit into your busy schedule with multiple start times throughout the year. UNE Online offers rolling admission with three separate start times—Spring, Summer, and Fall—so you can begin as soon as you’re ready to start.
Start with a Graduate Certificate, transfer it to a master’s degree later
Students who successfully complete the graduate certificate can “stack” earned credits into UNE’s 100% online Master of Healthcare Administration (MHA) degree program. This can be done immediately or within several years after completion of the graduate certificate. Reach out to an enrollment counselor at healthcareadmin@une.edu or (866) 722-5096 for more details on this opportunity.
After completing the four courses in the Healthcare Management Graduate Certificate, to earn the Master of Healthcare Administration, students would then need to take the following eight courses:
This course introduces students to central health informatics tools, techniques, and concepts used to improve health outcomes through technology. Students explore various healthcare technology platforms, how data is used in healthcare, and how the need for cybersecurity and health data privacy shape the information infrastructure that powers modern healthcare. This course offers students a framework for deeper understanding of many of the concepts explored in subsequent coursework.
This course explores the dynamic between healthcare delivery and leveraging data for enhanced patient outcomes. Given an increased scrutiny on empirical value-based care metrics for payer reimbursement, the strategic use of data will be key in new continuum of care models. Students will complete this course with a solid understanding of healthcare quality standards, the regulations around those standards, and how they are affected by the use of technology and data analysis. Key themes will include quality improvement methodologies, measuring and interpreting quality data, strategies to increase healthcare process reliability.
This course explores the challenges and opportunities facing healthcare leaders and organizations in an age of accountable care, and examines the critical role health data and informatics can and should play in strategic management. Using case-based study techniques, students explore practice and system management, strategic planning, and change leadership. Students combine these insights into health leadership with the actionable insights offered through effective health informatics and business intelligence practices, to craft optimal solutions to internal organizational processes and to external business decisions.
This course explores the fundamentals of finance and economics in a health care system at both the local system and national levels. Healthcare leadership increasingly depends upon deep and strategic understanding of the complex payor systems that provide revenue to their organizations. Students will gain expertise crafting strategic approaches to managing market supply and demand, the economics of care and managed care, budgeting, accounting, and fiscal reporting.
The implementation or integration of major projects or initiatives, such as a new healthcare technology system requires careful planning and organization. This course will provide students with widely-accepted concepts and skills that can be used and scaled to successfully complete projects of varying sizes. Through course work, students will gain experience with the common language used by professionals involved in project management. Students will explore concepts of project charter, work breakdown structures, scheduling, risk planning, and project reporting.
This course is the culmination of the student’s learning throughout the Healthcare Administration program. Combining the leadership theories and practices they have studied, the challenges facing the healthcare sector they have explored, and the contextual practice they have gained through their focus area courses, students will develop a research-based inquiry into healthcare leadership that addresses a current or emerging challenge relevant to their professional goals.
Plus two electives
Transfer credit policy
Upon acceptance, students may apply to transfer one 3-credit course (maximum three semester credits) into the Graduate Certificate in Healthcare Management program. In order to be considered for transfer, the course must be classified as graduate level, have been taken within five years of application, completed with a grade of “B” or better, and be equivalent to one of the required program courses or an elective course that meets the goals of the student’s education
To request consideration for transfer credit, a student must provide an official transcript and a course syllabus for each course. Your enrollment counselor or student support specialist can assist you with this request.
Students who successfully earn the Healthcare Management certificate are able to:
- Apply technology and the healthcare quality framework to meet the goals of the triple aim of improving the patient experience of care, improving the health of populations, and reducing the per capita cost of healthcare
- Demonstrate mastery of leadership skills and tactics required of healthcare managers and executives in the current healthcare environment
- Recognize the rhetorical and stylistic elements necessary for the successful communication of healthcare management strategies, policies, and procedures
- Stack earned credits from each course into a Master of Healthcare Administration degree
If you have any questions about the coursework or the program requirements, please speak to one of our enrollment counselors at the email or phone number below.