Exploring the MHA Program: Preparing Future Health Care Leaders (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: I think the most important criteria for a good student is a real desire to be an effective health care administrator, to deal with change and uncertainty, and to really improve our health care system, to help bring the cost down and improve the quality and improve the way health care is delivered.

Speaker 2: I decided to enroll in this program because I had a few mentors who told me that if I really wanted to advance my career in health care, I would need a master's degree.

Speaker 1: It's a really exciting program to teach in because there's so much change going on in health care, so it's really important to learn how to be a good manager and deal with all of the change that's going on.

Speaker 2: From the beginning of the program, you're placed into a team, and we were placed in the same team for both years. You get very close to your team members very quickly. They're assigned to groups from the get-go, and sometimes I work with those groups and sometimes I shake it up, because that's how it is in the real world. So having the smaller classroom setting, your professors get to know you, they also know your strengths and weaknesses, and they can help you become a better person, a better leader.

Speaker 1: So the students are assigned community mentors, and they can help them both in the mentors area of practice and also making other connections in the community. And then in addition, the students work on a capstone project. The program puts together several different ideas, and students select what they want to work on and then focus on a real problem.

Speaker 2: One of the most beneficial parts of the program that I found is the internship. The MHA program has really great connections with different hospitals and primary care clinics and health centers around this region, and also there's alumni all over the country.

Speaker 1: Our students go into managing hospitals, insurance systems, doing policy work for, say, state government or federal government agencies, working with insurance companies. So our students end up in a variety of health care-related managerial roles. We have students who come from all over the country, and they come here both because Seattle and the University of Washington are fabulous places to be studying these big issues, and also because of the larger health care community in this region who's doing exciting, innovative work.