Program Overview

---

Master of Health Administration (MHA) Program

The Master of Health Administration is an advanced professional degree preparing future healthcare executives for leadership positions in health services delivery across all sectors of the U.S. healthcare system.

Program Overview

The curriculum is designed to launch early careerists quickly into leadership positions and is also an excellent platform for those interested in making a career pivot into the corporate environment of hospitals and health systems, the health insurance industry, and consulting firms. The accelerated two-year residential cohort program includes one year of full-time academic coursework followed by a full-time, 11-month compensated administrative residency with faculty preceptors designed to provide direct experience through hands-on learning.

Program Accreditation

The program's curriculum, accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education (CAHME), provides for the development of conceptual, quantitative, and applied skills essential to lead contemporary healthcare organizations. The program was successfully reaccredited in 2022, extending through 2029.

Program Administration

• Program Director: Steve Meurer, PhD, MBA, MHS
• Associate Director: Conan Dickson, PhD, FACHE
• Associate Director: Karen Charron, MPH, BSN
• Sr. Academic Advisor: Keasha Wormley, MA

Bachelor's/MHA

The Johns Hopkins University, in conjunction with the Bloomberg School, offers a combined Bachelor's degree and Master of Health Administration (MHA) degree. The combined degree programs have been tailored to prepare students for a range of careers, including public health, healthcare management, and medicine.

MHA Program Requirements

Core Curriculum

The MHA program requires a minimum of 88 credits of didactic coursework. These credits are met through a full-time enrollment of a minimum 16 credits per term for the duration of the 2-year program.

Administrative Residency

Most students begin their residency between June 1 and July 1 after their first year of the program. Students complete the 11-month full-time, paid administrative residency where they apply their academic training in a professional healthcare management setting.

Culminating Experience: Residency Deliverables and Presentation

• Live Talk participation each term
• Progress reports and VoiceThread presentations each term
• Project Based Competency Assessments (baseline, December and April)
• 360 Professional evaluation
• Residency Critique
• Formal presentation

MHA Program Policies

Satisfactory Academic Progress

Satisfactory academic progress is measured by the following:

• To maintain satisfactory academic performance and good academic standing, all master's students must maintain a minimum grade point average of 2.75, and grades of A, B, P (pass), or S (satisfactory) in all courses required by the school or by the students department.
• Written documentation of successful completion of all Bloomberg School and departmental degree requirements within the established time limitations
• Confirmation of satisfactory performance by the students department and/or adviser as required.

Master's Tuition Scholarship (MTS)

The Master's Tuition Scholarship (MTS) provides eligible MHA students with a tuition scholarship worth 75% of one year's tuition. The scholarship can be applied in one of two ways: (1) All 75% applied in Year 2; or (2) 25% applied in Year 1 and 50% applied in Year 2.

MHA Learning Outcomes

Program Competencies

It is the program's goal that by the time students have successfully completed the coursework and administrative residency, they will have mastered the competencies outlined in the following domains:

Health and Healthcare Environment

1. Legal and Regulatory Environment: Explain federal, state and local laws and regulations affecting the delivery of health care and related services.
2. Financing Environments: Analyze the healthcare financing and economic environments, including regulations and processes applicable to public and private payers.
3. Health Policy Environment: Analyze the effects of health policy on providers, payers and populations and its implications for organizational response and change.
4. Provider Environment: Describe the array of key provider organizations and health professions and their implications for the quality and cost of care of individuals and populations.
5. Public Health: Establish goals and objectives for improving health outcomes that incorporate an understanding of the social determinants of health and the socioeconomic environment in which the organization functions.

Management

1. Financial Capability: Apply financial and accounting information and analytical tools to evaluate short and long-term options and goals and monitor financial performance.
2. Budget Management: Apply key accounting principles to prepare, monitor and manage budgets.
3. Market Analysis: Apply economic models to analyze healthcare sector events, developments and trends, and plan accordingly.
4. Operations Management and Performance Measurement: Apply quantitative and qualitative tools and models to analyze, evaluate and improve an organization's service orientation, patient safety, and quality processes and outcomes.
5. Knowledge Management: Create management structures that apply, analyze, evaluate, and convey information (gathered from both human and technological sources) to facilitate organizational decision-making.
6. Population Health Management: Apply epidemiological, biostatistical, and evidence-based methods to improve health system performance at the population level.
7. Workforce Systems: Organize and manage the workforce utilizing key performance indicators and employee engagement metrics.
8. Workforce Management: Direct the operation of a business segment through the development of the workforce's knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies.
9. Health Services Management: Explain the various organizational structures of health care delivery, funding mechanisms, and the way that health care services are delivered.
10. Strategic Thinking and Management: Provide overall direction to the enterprise, including specifying the organization's objectives, developing policies and plans designed to achieve these objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans.
11. Systems Thinking: Describe and analyze an organization from a systems perspective (i.e., as a complex set of cause-and-effect relationships).
12. Governance: Explain how to create and maintain a system of governance that ensures appropriate oversight of the organization.

Leadership

1. Innovation and Creativity: Facilitate diversity of thought in pursuit of developing new ideas, creating an entrepreneurial spirit, and identifying breakthrough opportunities to significantly enhance organization performance.
2. Leading Change: Promote ongoing organizational learning, champion organizational change when necessary, and manage the resources necessary to accomplish the change.
3. Influence: Promote the ideas and help shape the opinions and actions of others by understanding their needs, interests, and concerns through questioning thoughtfully and listening empathetically, communicating clearly both in writing and orally, and delivering persuasive and organized presentations.
4. Team Leadership: Develop team-oriented structures and systems to promote team performance, balance giving direction and support for team processes, and promote consensus to achieve goals.
5. Organizational Leadership: Articulate and communicate the mission, objectives, and priorities of the organization to internal and external stakeholders and entities.
6. Cultural Engagement: Create an organizational climate built on mutual trust and transparency, establish and communicate a compelling vision and hold oneself and others accountable for achieving organizational goals.

Relationship Management

1. Interpersonal Understanding: Exercise the use of empathy, listening, and diagnostic behavior in order to understand others' interests, concerns, needs, and nonverbal behavior.
2. Relationship Management: Develop and maintain collaborative relationships and shared decision-making with key leaders, colleagues, and stakeholders to achieve organizational and personal goals.
3. Collaboration: Facilitate a work environment focused on a shared purpose or goal, encouraging colleagues to work effectively with others, demonstrating enthusiasm for a collaborative solution, and communicating a shared sense of ownership and autonomy.

Standards of Professional Behavior

1. Professionalism: Demonstrate high ethical conduct, integrity, transparency and accountability for one's actions, and respect for others.
2. Initiative: Take action without being asked and offer solutions/options when presenting problems.
3. Advocacy: Advocate for the rights and responsibilities of patients and their families.
4. Professional Development: Demonstrate commitment to self-development including continuing education, networking, reflection, and personal improvement.
5. Self-Awareness: Be aware of one's own assumptions, values, strengths, and limitations.
6. Mentoring: Develop others by mentoring, advising, coaching, and serving as a role model.

CEPH-Defined Foundational Public Health Learning Objectives

According to the requirements of the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH), all BSPH degree students must be grounded in foundational public health knowledge.