Why This Ivy’s Top-Ranked Business & Medical Schools Are Partnering On A New Master’s Degree

Raven Bradley, a chiropractor by training, has often considered a business degree to help her grow a multidisciplinary health practice. But after seeing first-hand the disparities in America’s healthcare system, she decided to pursue a Master of Health Administration to better advocate for patients as well as providers.

She researched several MHA programs as well as dual MBA/MHA degrees before deciding on a program that had yet to enroll a single student: Dartmouth College’s new Master of Health Administration.

Unlike other MHAs which are typically offered in medical or public health schools, Dartmouth’s combines the expertise of its highly ranked business and medical schools in a partnership unique to the market.

“The unique collaboration between s top-rated business school and an Ivy League medical school is a significant asset to the program. This interdisciplinary approach not only enriches the curriculum, but also provides a comprehensive understanding of health care from both a clinical and a business perspective,” Bradley tells Poets&Quants.

“For me, this was the primary factor in my decision.”

Bradley aspires to one day become a health equity officer crafting policies that will make healthcare more fair and inclusive while improving access for all. That will take, she believes, a deep understanding of both a complicated American healthcare system and the business fundamentals required to drive efficiency and lower costs. This June, she was one of the first 35 students to study both in Dartmouth’s new MHA.

MHA VS AN MBA IN HEALTHCARE

There’s nothing new about focusing one’s business education on healthcare. It’s the largest industry in the U.S. economy, generating trillions of dollars in revenue every year and accounting for nearly 20% of the U.S. GDP.

Most of the top-ranked business schools offer a healthcare focus in some way, shape, or form. The Wharton School offers an MBA with a major in Health Care Management. University of Chicago Booth School of Business has a new joint MBA/MS Biomedical Sciences (BMS) program combining business expertise with foundational knowledge in biomedicine. Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management offers its Healthcare at Kellogg (HCAK) Deep Dive Program while Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School’s entire program is STEM-designated and filled with health-related electives.

But Dartmouth’s new MHA is unique in that it is the first to be jointly governed by a top-ranked business school and an Ivy League medical school. Its curriculum committee is evenly divided between faculty of both schools.

“There’s no one else in the country that partners the way that we’re partnered,” says Katherine Milligan, associate dean for Dartmouth’s Healthcare Management Education, a partnership between the college’s Geisel School of Medicine and Tuck School of Business.

“Most MHA programs are in schools of public health, schools of medicine, or schools of public policy. Occasionally, you find one in a school of public policy that has business focused classes, but they’re not being taught by business faculty. Or, you sometimes have an MHA in a business school with health-focused classes, but they’re not getting the faculty from the medical school itself.”

There are a couple of important distinctions with a healthcare focused MBA as well, namely in curriculum and class composition. On the curriculum side, Tuck’s expertise is in general management, so its MHA offers a curated general management curriculum specifically tailored for the healthcare environment. It’s narrow and deep, focusing on providing management and leadership expertise for those set on a healthcare career, Milligan says.

In class composition, an MBA program with a healthcare focus would have many classmates who aren’t in healthcare at all, and those who are might be more industry-oriented – toward pharma, medical devices, or even other industries like banking or consulting. In Dartmouth’s MHA, there’s a stronger focus on healthcare delivery, with students interested in health systems, entrepreneurial companies in healthcare, or the payer industry.

“The cohort’s diversity spans ages, racial/ethnic groups, and professional backgrounds, which has become a hallmark of my experience. Someone in my study group recently finished undergrad, another classmate is a former nurse and is currently wrapping up law school, one gentleman is a veteran, and one of my new friends is a speech pathologist. They all have leveraged their unique experiences to contribute to discussions and enlighten me on topics I was previously unaware of,” says Nathanael Quiala, an executive assistant at VillageMD, a value-based primary care company, and a student in two-year, parttime pathway of the Dartmouth MHA.

“Something I have come to realize with time is that business and medicine are inextricably linked when it comes to the health care industry. To develop an understanding of how health care operates means to appreciate the relationship between clinical excellence and operational efficiency, and that cannot be accomplished through a sole lens or school of thought.”

‘ONE OF THE WORKFORCES CRISES OF OUR TIME’

Dartmouth College saw the need for its new MHA as twofold: First, it saw growing demand for its executive- and mid-career level Master of Health Care Delivery Science degree launched in 2010 – the first degree to combine the expertise of its leading medical and business schools. That program accommodates about 50 students a year, but Dartmouth wants to reach more students earlier in their careers with the new MHA.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, there’s high demand for many more well-educated young professionals to move into healthcare management.

“It’s one of the demographic and workforce crises of our time. Aging baby boomers need more healthcare, more healthcare needs a larger workforce. At the same time, we’re dealing with the fallout of the pandemic which put a real crunch on the existing workforce. We feel like we are serving an important social need,” Milligan says.

1-YEAR AND 2-YEAR PATHS

Dartmouth’s MHA offers both a two-year path for working professionals and a one-year accelerated path for students, like Marinna Smallidge, who want to focus on their studies full time. Smallidge earned an undergraduate degree from Stanford in biomechanical engineering and just completed her master of medical studies at University of Queensland. She wants to work specifically on the systematic barriers to healthcare for underserved patients, and believes the accelerated path will get her into the work more quickly.

Ben Langholz, on the other hand, chose the two-year path so he could keep working as the Global Consulting Manager at Mayo Clinic where he leads strategic engagement for global healthcare organizations. He likes taking lessons directly from the classroom to his work while bringing more than a decade of healthcare experience into class discussions.

For both paths, the program is cohort based with all classes required. So, no electives, but students advance together. There are 20 students enrolled in the two-year cohort and 15 enrolled in the one-year. Milligan expects both numbers to grow.

All students participate in two, in-person residencies. In the first one in June, students studied rural healthcare challenges and visited three different healthcare organizations: an academic medical center, a critical access hospital, and a free clinic.

They also completed a Friday Night at the ER simulation, working in teams through hour-by-hour problems and opportunities that typically crop up in a hospital setting. For the first winter residency, faculty are planning a design thinking experience and exploring a virtual visit to a heart hospital in India, Milligan says.

While Jordan Dunaway-Barlow, an implementation manager at a Boston-based health tech company, explored other programs, the flexibility of Dartmouth’s MHA set it apart. She wanted to continue to advance career wise while pursuing her degree with the ultimate goal to work at making healthcare affordable for everyone.

“I believe that positive change in health care cannot happen without new policies and ideas being rooted in economic realities,” she tells P&Q. “Having the business school curriculum embedded in this program allows us to move forward pragmatically as we think about improving health care. It also fills a knowledge gap that I personally have, as my undergraduate studies were not focused on economics or business.”

IMMEDIATE, REAL-WORLD APPLICATION

With a background in neuroscience and mental health research, the big takeaway for student Mia Drury so far is the applicability of the classroom lessons to her day job. Drury now works as project manager supporting clinical and administrative operations for a multi-site private therapy practice.

She has no prior business training. But after learning about revenue cycle management in the MHA accounting course, she was able to help generate invoice aging reports and contribute to cost-analysis discussions at her job.

Another takeaway? The lessons she is learning from her classmates.

“My classmates work in a wide range of health care settings, including hospitals, private practices, insurance companies, consulting, and nonprofits. We are also at different stages in our career, from just a year or two out of college, to 20-plus years into a career as a health care clinician. I have found this diversity very helpful to my learning experience already.”

 

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