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Our healthcare industry is being transformed at an unprecedented rate, and the recent ruling by the US Supreme Court confirming “Obamacare” as the law of the land, is serving to accelerate that change across the industry, redefining relationships between private practitioners, hospitals, employers, insurance carriers and accrediting bodies.Areas impacted by the new legislation include an additional 44 million previously uninsured Americans for whom the system currently does not have the capacity to provide care. Other uncertainties include the need for better measures of quality of care, and changes regarding patient insurance coverage for hospitals and caregivers, due the intervention of new “insurance exchanges”.
As the industry is being transformed, it is forcing a redefinition of business relationships between provider organizations as well as changes in responsibilities among the professions through changes in state law.
The skills required to provide the leadership needed in this environment are also becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex. Unlike prior decades, learning to lead through “on the job” training is rarely an option when new leadership jobs become available. When the new leader arrives on the scene, he/she is expected to immediately understand and apply skills in such area as budgeting, financial forecasting, and strategic planning.
Healthcare professionals are increasingly expected to arrive in a new job with specialized training in these areas, and are less likely to be considered for leadership opportunities without them.
There are many clinically trained healthcare professionals who have the talent, interest and motivation, to fulfill an important leadership role, but who simply do not have the training, credentials, and experience to be considered.
In effect, this lack of professional training has created a “glass ceiling” preventing professional career advancement.
While not obvious to the casual observer, there are real career obstacles to be overcome in order for an experienced clinician to enter the “C Suite” and the world of executive leadership. These barriers will continue to become more difficult as it becomes increasingly evident that the inexperienced clinician simply does not have skill set necessary to negotiate these “troubled waters” over the next several years.
These new job demands will require this new generation of healthcare leaders to successfully lead large interdisciplinary teams in the redesign of obsolete care delivery systems, as well as possess uncommon negotiating skills as provider organizations redefine their legal and strategic relationships. Other challenges will include the exceptional financial skills needed to accurately forecast the initiation of new clinical services as well as the discontinuation of services no longer needed.
Earning the LECOM MHSA degree is a highly hands-on process with a strong foundation in team problem solving, case analysis, and a year-long internship in a complex provider environment.
The objectives of the Program include the development of new skills in such areas as team leadership, written and verbal communications, cultural change, organizational design, strategic planning, and financial management.
LECOM students may choose a dual-degree tract, thereby completing both their clinical rotations and the requirements of the MHSA Program concurrently.
Students may choose between an eighteen and twenty-four month curriculum with the shorter of the two being more compressed and accelerated.
Evidence of the value of the Program is the fact that several of our class of 2015 have already been promoted to leadership roles in such areas as pharmacy management, quality management and vice president of a national provider organization.
