In today’s healthcare environment, adapting to change is not enough. Healthcare executives and managers are tasked with leading change and driving results. This course will cover practical strategies leaders and emerging leaders can use to anticipate, plan, and respond to policy, regulatory, and practice changes in the industry.

Technology excites in its promise to help transform and improve lives. Yet we observe that this promise has not always translated into reality, particularly in the Global South.

Organized around key applications and case studies, this course examines the promises – and pitfalls – of technology for impact. It examines the ways in which entrepreneurs and practitioners harness technologies to solve key challenges, while also questioning how new technologies transform or reinforce dominant paradigms.

Advancements in awareness and understanding have led to greater equity and inclusion in society for people with disabilities and health conditions. Developments such as the establishment of Disability Studies as an interdisciplinary field in the 1980’s and the introduction of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) in 1990 are key milestones in this journey. However, these achievements alone do not guarantee the extent of attitudinal and behavioral change needed within our communities and organizations to remove the barriers and prejudices that remain.

The Realities of Managing Complex Health Systems course is designed to provide students with an up close perspective of how large health systems operate. Using real life case studies, expert insight, and relevant reading materials the course will outline the problems, issues, and possible solutions for essential areas of management, operations, and finance such as:

This course aims to improve your ability to effectively manage and lead health service organizations.  We examine a range of key challenges that managers must address to optimize organizational performance, including questions of mission, vision, and strategy ("What areas or activities should we be working in?") and questions of organizational design and operations ("How can we perform effectively in this area?").

Whether you are a founder or working for a founder, you are an innovator and an entrepreneur. The Making of a Healthcare Entrepreneur is the course for current and future health care innovators interested in learning how to exploit gaps and opportunities in the evolving healthcare industry and launch meaningful, valuable companies as measured by customers and investors. It provides innovators with the essential steps needed to take their idea from concept to reality.

All public and nonprofit organizations must assemble and report information on their performance. The need for performance measures goes beyond legal and regulatory requirements. To provide services effectively and efficiently, managers need information to make decisions. This course focuses on what performance measures are needed, how they should be created and what forms of communication are most effective.

Building on the concepts introduced in the core financial management course (CORE-GP.1021), this course covers the fundamentals of financial accounting for healthcare organizations. It provides a look behind the financial statements used in all organizations and focuses on preparation of statements and the use of financial accounting in decision making. Topics include journalizing transactions into debits and credits, double-entry accounting, creating general ledger accounts (T-accounts), and accounts receivable (including aging schedules).

Traditionally, governments have the ultimate responsibility for assuring the conditions for their people to be as healthy as they can be. In this sense one of the fundamental societal goals of health services may be considered the health improvement of the population served and for which the individual government is responsible. As our understanding of the multiple determinants of health has dramatically expanded, exercising this responsibility calls for a national health policy that goes beyond planning for the personal health care system and addresses the health of communities.

This course encourages students to think creatively about what it means for a healthcare organization to make quality the highest priority. We will explore the current forces driving the push toward quality outcomes and accountability at all levels and settings of healthcare, while focusing on the philosophy of continuous improvement through team work and statistical thinking. Students will use structural tools for analysis, decision making and performance measurement.

Advanced Health Care Payment Systems is designed to familiarize students with the various health care payment systems that are used by various healthcare payers. The course focuses on Medicare's prospective payment systems for hospital and other provider type reimbursement. It also covers New York State Medicaid reimbursement issues and provides a general understanding of the healthcare charge structure. The course will also focus on the fundamentals of establishing a compliance program to identify and prevent fraud and abuse issues.

The Wagner School Summer Institute brings together faculty and students from the United States and other parts of the world for an on-site exploration of international health policy and prospects in Geneva, Switzerland.