Brown University has launched an Executive Master of Healthcare Leadership program, to begin in August 2013. The 16-month program targets high-level, experienced clinicians, executives and senior administrators who have significant responsibility in the healthcare industry.  

The offering pulls from many existing programs but “we didn’t want to replicate any of them,” said Judith Bentkover, PhD, academic development director, in an interview with Clinical Innovation + Technology. The program is designed to provide a forum for various healthcare stakeholders to interact. “We were determined from the very beginning to connect the silos so everyone is working together to transform healthcare.” “Everyone” includes clinicians, life science executives, patient advocates, healthcare lawyers, healthcare consultants and nursing leadership.

Each student is asked to identify a critical challenge in their own job when they apply. Then, the students will work together in small teams to address those challenges. “That is vitally important and is not there in a lot of other programs,” said Bentkover. The students also will apply what they’re learning in each course to their respective critical challenge. “We want to really engage the students and have them work collaboratively to come up with solutions. By the end of all the courses, they will have thoroughly analyzed a situation that is meaningful to them and useful to their organization. They will benefit from a lot of input from other high-level students and faculty."

The program will include a course in health IT and “we’re going to be pushing the edge of technology in terms of having courses in the latest uses of technology and uses of data,” said Bentkover. A technology theme will run through all the courses, she said, including a course on leveraging IT to improve patient care. “We’re really going to deal with the issues that led to the current state of health IT and talk about barriers that need to be overcome for health IT to be a very positive agent for change in healthcare."

The courseload includes strategic planning, accounting, healthcare policy and quality improvement. The developers went out to the marketplace to ask organizations “what is necessary to create leaders who can truly transform healthcare,” Bentkover said. They did extensive market research to find out who they will hire in the future, what they want their CEO to know and what skills those leaders need. “Those skills and knowledge is what shaped the content of each course as well as the course offering.”

Bentkover said the school also wanted to offer an accelerated program that blends online and in-person study and allows students to continue working full-time. The ideal output will be “transformative change in the U.S. healthcare system.”

Graduates should emerge with leadership competencies that include the ability to collaborate across healthcare sectors, communicate effectively, engage in active listening, provide constructive feedback, react with agility and flexibility, make ethical decisions, mentor others, employ technology appropriately, develop succession plans, stimulate creativity, develop and work effectively with teams, energize and motivate staff, build consensus, drive results, assign accountability and accept responsibility. “Those are what we’re building into each course and the program,” Bentkover said. “Every student will know what those words mean.”

The results of the upcoming election will not change the leadership qualities that healthcare organizations will need in the future, Bentkover said. “No matter what happens, who gets elected, what’s staying on the books, what’s going to be modified on the books, what will go off the books, these are skills that are going to be required to be an effective player in the healthcare arena in the future. Life is not going to allow this healthcare sector to stay the same even if no laws change.”

Brown is accepting applications in a rolling admissions process and already has well-qualified applicants for the inaugural session. The target cohort is 21 students, Bentkover said, which is “small enough where everyone will get to know each other but large enough to be divided into groups and get a lot of collaboration and learning from each other.”

For more information, go to the program’s website.